Four Poems

By Ashton Palmer

THE GIRL WHO NEVER WAS, PETAL FALL

The petals that curve your chest are

big & full & lovely & fall in months when the dog

    sucks in, lets pink - the brown water stains -

wilt & leaves me so lonely

    & without. Petal, pet, girl, gorgeous, love:

Salty blood fighting through my skin,

     bursting at the finger-tips;

truly innocent, ingrained, visceral dread you can see drop

 like a sack of heaviness to

the floor, its skin pierced with claw marks - nails sharp with the hope

of bloodying something as delicate

as the insufferable human body. I have

an image

not mirrored in my head;

Full-chested, absolutely lovely girl; she’ll wear

a sundress, Shirley Temple curls, giggle with a carnation baseline -

What could’ve been, what isn’t, what the fallen petals wished to lie on:

 Now, withered they lie, rotted on a grave

of someone who never was.

USELESS BODY, WHEN ALONE

What Roars like a faucet and doesn’t come back?

- visceral tenderness, in crevices, it bleeds

when the wanting shows, when you

know I can’t go home the same as you do; a running lyric

   In my head, I’m a moth bashing

       Its spineless body at the window, alone without blossoms, nosebleeds

    of human moments, of human time, mirrored grins, another:

Burning ashes, muddy water, a carsick driver, a useless pile of flesh & dirt, a keening child

I am alone. Gushing water.

I MISS YOU WHEN IN WANT, NOT IN NEED.

I’d expect nothing more than an empty,

placid stare by now — how long has it been?

Maybe a year, soon a few, where I have

throbbing headaches in your memory.

Often I think, if I see you again, would I bleed through

bones I’ve hardened in thought? Or melt to merge

a singular heartbeat?

I left you in sludge at that train stop, even if

we did wear cotton scarves for three more months —

I planned to end it then.

So the marrow blooms sprouted; course & heavy,

aching for our beginnings of bleeding red to gush

from older scabs. But in my sense, I felt a scar from our

relationship had already formed; there was no need to pick

at it now — you needed to heal too, without me.

“A leaver, not a fighter.” Hardly a lover —

I’m cowardly that way.

AT NIGHT

At night I bleed under the covers –

sheets pooling a large, deep stain – through to

the mattress & down to the gaping floor, a hole

of snapshots. Resurfacing to nip the face that peers

to it from above. To sink even deeper after held

hands, laughter & cheek-filled grins; an ever sinking

hollow of soil – fill it with water, sprout garden cress,

empty space, no doubt.