Tonight, I don’t want to speak with you
I want to sit in silence next to you
and be still with you.
I don’t want to look at you, wrap my body
around you or even laugh with you.
I want to feel the silence envelop us
over, around and across.
A figure eight like an Arabian dance
reminding that we are one
in ourselves and together.
I want to sit next to you
in the weight of this stillness.
I don’t want to think of you, desire you or be inside you.
Let your hands do what they want to
Let them find the touch of my knees
and the movement in my breath.
And know that when your hands glide across my leg
and when your arms hold me,
you hold all the imperfections of my body.
And I will sit here
Enjoying the jingles of this silent dance
Here in this moment with you
And when you are not here,
Know that I will think of you and desire you and love you
as you are here now in stillness with me,
doing nothing else
than loving this and loving us
Men who build lighthouses know a lot about darkness.
Men who build lighthouses know the depths of the sea.
I once knew a man who built lighthouses and love
on rocks and waves around the coast of my country.
He knew the dark and the light and the strength of the sea.
I’ve been swimming through the dirt of the dark swampy waters
Immersed one day by the hand of Hercules.
From the Irish coast to north western Spain
He made me battle the whirlpools of the Celtic Sea.
I learned about the light and the dark and the holding of rocks
And about love and land and how to set myself free.
I now see a lighthouse and I’m close to the surface
Above murky greens and browns – once a home for me
And I’m swimming and swimming – up and up
For I know it is good and I know it is strong.
But the closer I get, the less I can see
Blinded by light that finds darkness within me.
Men who build lighthouses learn the meaning of darkness.
Men who build lighthouses read the waves of the sea.
Their work becomes a stillness in the midst of the ocean
Sacrificing safety for solitude at sea.
In the dark they build a light to guide boats home,
But each man needs a light to survive at sea.
It’s Christmas and it’s raining.
It’s Christmas and it’s raining
and I’m in my room
and you’re in your room,
next to mine
and it’s raining.
Pap is asleep
and Mam is gone to Mass
and it’s raining.
The baby is gone
with Seán and Claire
and Thomas is somewhere,
the cat’s in his bed
and it’s raining.
Granda is gone.
It’s Christmas
and it’s raining.
I’m still in bed
looking at faded cat posters
and paint chippings
and low hanging hooks
and it’s Christmas and it’s raining.
And you’re in your room
looking at dusty photos
and porcelain dolls
and birthday cards.
It’s Christmas and it’s raining
and I feel big in my room.
Do you feel big in your room?
Come here to me
because it’s Christmas
and it’s raining.
When you play hide and seek with yourself
Where do you hide your truth?
Does your sun hide behind the clouds?
Or is it in the ocean?
Or in a rabbit’s burrow?
Hide not your laughter
Nor your sorrow.
Let hope be your spirit
And grief be your wisdom.
Let joy be your food
And peace be your rest.
Let fear be your saviour,
For it’s love’s most truthful test.
See trust in the mirror
Let courage be your strength
And let all your tears
Form a river
Winding in paths unforeseen
Into the ocean where love hides.
Let love be the light source of your life.
I waited for the robin
to land on my palm
like it did on yours
and sing the words
I longed to write since your death.
I waited for the skies to open,
for the stars to speak
and the autumn leaves
to paint some sort of heaven on earth
with you in my verse.
Nothing came,
but waves of sorrow
sweeping the weight of my bones
down into the ground.
Until one Sunday evening
in the supermarket,
I saw you.
Standing there; the special’s shelf
at the edge of the aisle.
The height of you.
The width of you.
McVitie’s Digestives
Jacob’s Fig Rolls
and Rich Tea.
The ones you’d bring
with the paper
on your walks from Delgany village.
I wanted all of them.
I wanted all of you.
But the ghost of you
whispering behind me
like you did once before:
You’re sweet enough.
My grief for you is a beautiful thing.
Santa brought me a black slate last Christmas. Not because I was on his naughty list but because he wanted to give me a very important message. On the slate, written in gold pen reads:
Words are magical
Use yours to Heal, Inspire, Encourage, and Empower.
“How cute!” I thought. And I now have the slate resting on my bay window amongst some disorganised piles of books, folders and loose sheets I use for my TEFL classes. Inevitably, I contemplate the slate regularly when I find myself distracted from work and gazing out the window. Its message strikes me still. We all have words and we all have the ability to let them glimmer like fairy dust.
That Christmas was quiet for me. My brother was away with his beloved on honeymoon, my sister left one day later with her boyf and my friends were either home in different parts of the country or having their own respective date nights with long term boyfriends or fiancés. One evening a day or two after Stephen’s day, my parents were watching a series together I had no interest in (probably something political like House of Cards). I remember sitting in my room bored and lonely. In fact, I was feeling quite sorry for myself. Christmas really isn’t my favourite time of year. I was looking up at old photos I had stuck to my wardrobe of a holiday I’d been on with my parents and my younger sister a few years back in Corsica. That holiday is for me my happy place I go to in my head when I’m feeling down or when I can’t sleep. The particular moment was when we were lying on a little beach together with no one around and only up until recently had this information been my own magic secret close to my heart. That evening, I took out my diary and began to write as I could sense a poem about Corsica coming to me. I jotted down some notes and it wasn’t until a month later that I came back to it, gave it structure, omitted words and gave it some rhythm. The poem moved me as I wrote it and I was grateful for it. A small part of me knew it was the better one of a bunch of poems I had written so far.
I came to a point a few months after that I wanted to submit some poetry for publication in local online publications and competitions. It was my first time submitting poetry so I wasn’t surprised when I received a bunch of rejection emails. All writers get rejected so I was happy to take that first step. But one day, I received an email from a sender named Rethink Your Mind congratulating me on my poem and informing me that it was going to be published in this year’s edition of The Yellow Book. I had to reread the email a few times to fully understand the news. I had completely forgotten about my submission to them! Rethink Your Mind is a non-profit organisation in the UK raising awareness for mental health through art, photography, music and poetry published in their annual Yellow Book. They were looking for work inspired by the line “I feel better when…” and so I believed my poem Do you remember to be the most apt for this submission. Not only was my poem being published in a hardback book with 10,000 paperback copies being distributed in the UK but I was invited to the London book launch ceremony in June.
Fast forward to June and there I was, in my Sunday best, on a terrace overlooking the Thames, tucking into a cream tea, IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS!! Talk about magic or wha?!
Little did I know that a moment of feeling low would gift me like this. I now realise that in that moment I used my magic wand – I wrote to feel better. And I truly believe everyone has a wand be it cooking, baking, writing, singing, dancing, painting… This is the message Rethink Your Mind advocates to help those suffering with their mental health. They encourage engagement in all art forms. The launch ceremony was excellent. We got to mingle with all the artists and speeches were given about this wonderful initiative from very interesting sponsors and bodies such as the NHS and even the police service promoting mental health awareness in all pockets of society.
I am so incredibly proud that my poem now resides among many very impressive works in The Yellow Book and I hope that it will take readers to the beach in Corsica for a brief moment of peace in their busy lives.
proud moment!
cream tea selfie!
I couldn’t not get this one…
I look down at your feet
next to mine
Your shoes are big
bigger than your eyes can see
If only you knew
how lovely your feet were
and your step
that treads softly on the earth
Your shoes are strong
leather and brown
Two rows of eyelets
face one another
They’re the holes in your heart
the people in your life
Laces crisscross
bringing them close and tight
If only you knew
how lovely your feet were
Tie your laces tight
So you won’t trip and fall
Baby,
It’s been so long since I have written to you. I don’t know what has kept me. I did write for you. I promise. I wrote scrawls and scribbles on loose paper and in diaries. I drew stars and hearts and perfect trees with flowers and I underlined the prettiest lines in books I have stacked next to my pillow. But nothing I have written has been good enough. Nothing I have thought of has been good enough and sometimes I feel like nothing will ever be good enough. Sometimes I feel I am not good enough. Not as a daughter. Not as a sister. Not as a woman. And so I sit here, with this dull ache in my core struggling to accept. The codeine from the pink box lets me float a little closer to the clouds and my toes dance. I need to file my nails but I’ll wait. Maybe I will grow them long and paint them like my mother’s. This evening I found a poem in a book I love and it’s for you. It’s for all babies. I will rewrite it here because it’s so beautiful. This is for all babies and for all mothers and for all people who love it like I do.
Tree of Life (Eavan Boland)
A tree on a moonless night
has no sap or colour.
It has no flower and no fruit.
It waits for the sun to find them.
I cannot find you
in this dark hour
dear child.
Wait
for dawn to make us clear to one another.
Let the sun
inch above the roof-tops,
Let love
be the light that shows again
the blossom to the root.
I like it when he sits there on his armchair watching football, as if for the first time.
Jersey on, beer in hand, crisps on the arm rest.
I like watching his eyes stay glued to the game as his head tilts and slurps.
I catch his chest bounce forward at every strike at goal and every groan that follows.
I like how he barely takes notice of my questions as I sit near him and write.
An emotion is born and leaps out, as if for the first time, ricochets the set and pierces my heart.
He beams at me. He sings. I pretend not to care.
This is love.
(Published in The Yellow Book, 2015 – Rethink Your Mind)
Do you remember that summer?
Together in Corsica
We drove the winding roads
Through the coral sunbeat mountains
To the coast of Cargèse.
I’ll never forget the beach
Where we laughed together for hours
On that peaceful afternoon.
We were the only ones
Lying there
You, me, mam and pap
And oh how we laughed at her – a mummy
Wrapped like that, in her cream pashmina
Hiding from grains that danced with the wind
And at him
For, well… just being him
In those shorts and with that hat
Do you remember?
Running on the warm sand with me
To where the little boats lay tired and thirsty
We sat on their edge
Drawing stars in the sand with our toes
And we left them there
As a thank you note to the night sky
For always being there to wish upon
So when I need to, I go back there
Back to Corsica
With you
Between the mountains and the sea
Dancing on those little boats
Where all that mattered was just to be
Lisa de Jong 