Logo
Logo

ELLEN BRAY KOSS

Commended 2023 - Tower Poetry Competition, 'The Planets'

 

falling in love with pluto again in the alleyway behind my house

I called by your house on Tuesday, but no one was home. It made me think

of when we were children, and I would sing you Billie Holiday songs

over a tin can telephone, to help you get to sleep.

 

Are you forgetting the rust and the debris and the way silence thrums in your

eardrums? I don’t believe in second chances, and you didn’t believe in me.

 

I’m sorry, but I looked outwards and everything seemed so much

more complicated. I was blinded by that smouldering in the distance, the one

we always used to talk about. Do you remember?

 

Maybe. But nostalgia is a liar, who distracts us

while it erases our regrets.

 

I don’t regret anything.

 

Not even the leaving?

 

I regret that you saw me turn others over in my palms, after I pledged

these hands to you, and I regret not telling the heart on your sleeve

that I was coming back for it.

 

If I told you that the heart on my sleeve is actually a poisonous

ocean no one has explored yet, what would you say? If I told you that the

heart on my sleeve is actually a poisonous ocean I haven’t explored yet,

what would you say?

 

I would remind you that what once filled my brain is now only a hangnail

at the edge of my consciousness. I am ready to become a scuba diver.

 

All those years, I sat alone with the emptiness, so viscid it slid between

my fingers. My voice has become splintered after screaming into the

darkness, hoping it would do something other than stare back and laugh.

 

I will fix it for you. I will stitch back every one of your vocal chords

with my tongue as the needle and I will swatch each star to find

the perfect match for that flush in your cheeks, just so I can paint you

into history and prove that you were never insignificant.