Jacqueline Marcel Hawthorn

I fall back into the clasp of the long green grass, a snake unravelling in my mind,
Pushing between the heavy damp earth and weightless sky I soar
As a sparrow-hawk, plummeting, dizzy with success and fall in a strike that
disorientates the clouds. Drop like a pewter stone into the quiet thanks
...

I took a sword from the righteous and watched how they wept,
I took a knife to the homeless, diseased and bereft for
what king, what farmhand, what girl, what mother
doesn’t love a man with blood on his sleeve?
...

It’s time to return to that pedestal, where you still cling –
gripping, long-fingered, to the edges of my affection and smudging grey
shadows in the sunless white room. I throw open the blinds and turn to be rid of you
but scrape, graze and sever, it’s all in vain agony, to wretch you from the plinth
...

When you killed me at first it was obvious, predictable, comprehendible
That I would die.
Would float away into nothingness, combust into an ash of myself, a piece of nothing,
A small, pale scar on the face of the earth.
...