[Somewhere on the mantelpiece inside your house]

Somewhere on the mantelpiece inside your house,

I stand motionless within a frame.  Wading fearlessly through

the cold receding sea, with hair the colour of honey

obscuring itself across my vision, and in the air my grey

scarf waving like a distress signal—fossilised.  The camera light

flashed seconds before waves flooded my boots, water breaking

into damp dust around my knees and my smile breaking

into laughter, before stumbling barefoot back to your house.

I remember you called me a diamond in a world of coal.  A light

through the mist, softly luminous and guiding people through

the sourness of their own oceans.  But drinking warm earl grey

tea with you, all I could taste was pure happiness and honey.

Summer swam round, and the bees spread rumour of honey,

but all I could hear was the smash of lights inside me breaking,

and the low buzzing of machines beneath the steady gaze of grey

hospital walls.  Roses in empty wine bottles unfolded in the house,

anxiously mourning red petal fingernails.  You looked sadly through

me, and I was left swallowing saltwater streams under fluorescent light.

Autumn in Cambridge, and the stars wouldn’t shed me as much light

as they did over the sea.  I lay awake and kept them company with honey

sweetened coffee, a palimpsest of limbs and layers leafing through

pages upon pages of poetry.  My blurry eyes resisted breaking

concentration until the walls dissolved around me, the small house

of my room washed away on a tide of sleep.  Suddenly I’m running.  Grey

wolves behind me and I’m running, running from the grey

teeth breathing just beyond my shoulder blades.  An unsteady light

is flickering between needling trees; history assures me it’s a house.

If I can only reach the red front door, porridge warm with honey

sits upon the stove, and my Grandmother will love me again.  Breaking

slowly, I’m about to knock when the dream drops my hand through

the air, and back to the little room where October seeps through

the window frame.  The city is a puddle of glistening yellow and grey,

and everybody has wolf-eyes in the rain.  Their irises keep breaking

me, and so I build myself like honeycomb.  Wax might create candlelight,

but for now my light is stored, and the slightest knock bleeds a honey

that will never wash from my hands.  I guard myself like a honeycomb house.

I wonder about your house by the sea, and how long that photo remained through

the year.  You tell me my honey hair is darker now, and my eyes are a deeper grey.

You tell me it’s difficult to love a light, when every darkness is a reminder of their breaking.