home poetry prose about

charlie bell

archive of poetry and collected works

poetry

let's

Thursday, 19. May - 2022

i'm smiling down the path
and through (our) light there's
buttercups and daisies among green.

we'd never grow peonies or roses
or lavender
it'd be trees, and more trees, and my
stone-faced neighbours and their stone-faced children

i wasn't a fan of yellow -
not the sun, nor that coarse shade of grass:
placed along you, perhaps,
i'll learn to love it too.

and perhaps it's the closest thing to peonies we have,
but i've always made the most of things.


untitled

Sunday, 8. May - 2022

there's a small tugging in the back of my mind
and it feels too comfortable and i think
how are you real?
i'll ask, someday,
what god created you?
and to myself:
surely not whatever made me.


we talked

Thursday, 14. April - 2022

It's more than a stumble or trip on sentences, on an aching throat or scripted conversation worn thin,
on one spring evening where you feel words have failed you for the very first time.
It is coming to terms with
that which has reckoned you,
myself laid bare.

Disingenuous. Enter left,
you'll play the part for a moment or two
until you catch eyes, momentarily
and you'll feel the stage fall through.

And you'll reach solid ground, and realise -
stood before her once again
It was no fall from grace, but a fall from pride,
and for the first time in your life you can breathe.


nov 4

Saturday, 4. November - 2021

It's a sweet agony.

Is it too much, too soon? To playfully roll over, hand you daring confessions between fits of laughter, hold you longer than I should - to be so unsure why I feel all at once a breath of home, pure ecstasy, as though I have begun life; and that my world is ending?

I breathe. Again. It is our hands intertwined after a long day, of tiredness that seeps into both of us as we take turns resting our heads on our shoulders: closing my eyes next to you and feeling such heart-wrenching safety I was completely unable to sleep.

There are two of you. Someone who has taken every step to walk toward me, rather than walk away - to trust me, to tolerate me, to love me for who I am. To feel similar, to feel kindred, to hold memories shared only between us.

The other is a stranger.

I am seeing you for the first time, despite seeing you every day. It is in the way I will not leave, even if it means staying for three hours waiting after you.

It is holding hands in public spaces in a curious way friends do not, and shying away with a familiar face.

It is too much. It is also nothing, constructed by me and myself, merely made up; unreal. There is a fine line lovers cross, and with you in hand, we dance to and fro.