past lives

Stay alive for lip gloss
Bubblegum and peach schnapps
Lemonade picnics and pocket money
Tell everyone your secrets
Dye your hair
Sleep with someone in a band
Read Cosmo not Kerouac
Scream and slam your bedroom door
Smirnoff Ice and stolen lipstick
McDonald’s on a Friday night
Holding hands with your best friend
Choking on a cigarette

Black nail polish
Maybelline dreams
Learn kissing from the movies
Tears and music that
Rolls like thunder
Glitter hormones and
Rage in shimmering tangerine

Young love murder
Is the heel of a black stiletto
Piercing your chest

quilting

That was the sound of the sea sending you to sleep.
That was the day you shared a bag of chips with your friends,
Sucking salt off your fingertips.
That was the great gulps of icy wind.
That was the fabric into which you were sewn.
That was the burn of hot tea on your tongue.
That was the fuzz of radio on winter mornings.
That was the fiddle music drifting down school corridors.
That was years.
A warm shoulder to nestle into.
A hand squeezing yours.
You unpick the threads of self from your geography
And you fray, uncertain.
Tell yourself the stars above
Will always be the same.