Your lessons in abandonment have finally come into use as I forget each day to water the sweetpea hanging from the tree and watch it crisp beneath the sun's heat, yellowing like teeth. I wonder if you did this too every time you dug your heels in deep and saw her before me, refusing to … Continue reading The Sweetpea
Love is a mirror, a reflection woven from my own blood and skin, an image persistent in its desire to be let in. Poem: © Kristiana Reed 2019 Between the Trees UK Between the Trees US Available internationally
The hum of the halogen oven roasting Sunday's lunch could lull me to sleep with the incessant ticking, tiny gale of air and its warmth. The golden light flooding the kitchen intermittently; reaching for me with tender rays of light, hoping to draw me closer and cradle me in thoughts of every Sunday I have … Continue reading Sunday lunch
I'm slowly beginning to learn love is more than fireworks, blushing pinks and chemical reactions. It is more than marriage vows, tea in the morning and collecting flowers to tuck behind your ear. It is more than wrinkled hands in our nineties, gifts of paper and gold. It stains like pollen on white, sticks … Continue reading Pollen on white
I like to watch you, from the window, saunter to the fence from where you can watch the wind perform in zigzags across the wheat and sigh, exhale blue smoke into the sky and listen to the day fade away into blackbirds fussing and the cat stalking from beneath the rose bush. I like … Continue reading Nature and you
Before you, my body was a fire alarm. It rang, bleating like a lost lamb, long past midnight; echoing down the road, ricocheting off street lamps to fall upon deaf ears and back into my trembling hands. Poem: © Kristiana Reed 2019 Between the Trees UK Between the Trees US Available internationally
Love is North, East, South and West. It is all things, grid lines and telephone wires, valleys and peaks, it is West with the setting sun and East in the morning, it is South, North, two steps backwards and beginning all over, again. Written for Susan M. Conway's 100 Days of Writing Prompts: 'Love is … Continue reading All the points on a compass
Your drawn face says all I needed to know; you desired to accompany me on my journey but I left you, back there, with my childhood toys and memories, an attic space - four walls you will have to become accustomed to. It echoes too, with all you did and should have taught me. There … Continue reading An attic space
I apologised too often, and you, never enough. I apologised for the pink my cheeks blushed like whiplash after a drink. I apologised for breaking my own heart and the glass left on the sideboard, drying. I apologised for the tears I could no longer explain; promised you, it was not you who had caused … Continue reading Apologies
Most days my body speaks in Chinese whispers; hiding the compliments and concealing the insults to become congealed words of self loathing and distaste. Until the voices rise and tremble like the peak of a volcano; erupting into screams of hatred, baying for blood and violence, teeth bared, turning a rabid stare onto the … Continue reading My body speaks
