Passion sharpened nails tear the evening sky,
Scraping at the waxy black of dusk.
And across sgraffito skies,
Comes a bitter juice of yellow grapefruits
And sour Seville oranges,
Weeping from those citrus cuts.
Fill my bowl and fill it again.
With tart crepuscular fruit,
All laced with acidic poison,
To feed my sorrow laden night.
Impatience breaks the hold of darkness.
Chased away by dawn’s own bullwhip.
It cracks and snaps at sullen gloom,
With vicious flicks to summon reluctant fortitude.
New scars will lie beside the old,
Those scarlet welts conspiring.
A host of grievous sores
Concealed by diurnal calling
This battlefield life,
Where I am never the victor.
Yet I persist, never defeated.
And forward I advance
My limbs all trembling.
Weighed down by campaign medals,
Pinned upon a fragile psyche,
All jingle-jangling and chiming out,
‘Come to me, Sirius,
Find me once again.’
And that snarling cur returns my call.
With diamond tipped claws,
He slices with savage precision.
Opening the soft skin of night,
Licking at the freshly made wounds
That cross my sgraffito life.
M S CLEMENTS is a former teacher of Anglo-Spanish heritage. She recently completed her debut novel, The Third Magpie and hopes to see it published later this year. As well as editing the speculative love story, M has also had a short story published in Cabinet of Heed and another printed in an anthology of women’s writing, Carrying Fire.
She continues to live on a building site in rural Buckinghamshire with her family, assorted builders and a visiting peacock called Darren.
Image via Pixabay
The Cabinet of Heed 