A bumpy track led to the old cottage. The place hadn't been lived in for quite a while but was intact, a perfect timber-framed Tudor cottage. Even the old thatch didn't leak. Just two rooms downstairs with a small lean-to on the back, the kitchen still had a Dutch oven and an old copper for hot water. A kite-winder staircase followed the central chimney up to two bedrooms.

The place was coming up for auction. Desperately I wanted it. At the auction it made four times what I could afford. The buyer did not move in however. There was a story about him being in prison. At this time the farmers used to dispose of waste straw after combining by burning it in the fields, a practice now banned. That's how the thatch caught alight. There was no attempt to fight the fire because no-one even noticed it. Gales later blew in the gable ends, then the chimney crumbled, brambles grew over it until there was hardly a visible trace of the place left.

I wish I could have saved it. It would have been beautiful. Instead I bought a little terrace, then a detached needing renovation, then the one we have today. I got what I wanted eventually, but I still think about that old place sometimes, and how I wanted it.

WHEN YA GOTTA GO YA GOTTA GO

minus zero
the statue pees
an icicle

You're angry again.
You came home again,
The smell of whiskey and frustration
On your breath,
Ready to remind me
Of everything I do wrong.
You start with the yelling.
But the yelling I can take.
It's when you start to throw things--
The lamp, the plates, the chairs--
That my heart begins to ache.
I never fear you hurting me--
Nothing you've ever thrown has striked.
But it's the way you throw things
Without a care
Of which items you toss and break,
But never once
Do you let go
Of the bottle in your hand.
Objects fly across the room,
But you never loosen your grip
On the neck of your bottle.
You hold it and never let it go,
The same way you promised
You would do to me
When I was still young and beautiful.
You promised.
You said you'd hold me
And never let me go.
I envy your bottle,
And long to once again
Be the one between your fingers.
But you will never love me as much
As you love that glass and whiskey.

Sometimes I wonder

if I even survived
my childhood.

Maybe some part of me
is sleeping
up on the hill.

One of those
Nightmares
That I couldn't escape
Carried me off
In its jaws

and so maybe
I am planted.
Looking down
At all the people
I can't remember.

I hope that I am ashes.
I never wanted a stone.

Madagascan Vanilla
seeped in hot water from the new kettle
swirling with honey
staring up at me

steaming asking where my voice has gone

where my apology has gone

its lost among my mind
brewing darker and darker
to bitter to think anymore
lips pursed at re realizations about
me

myself

no matter how much sugar I pour in

sweet is something I'll ever be.