AN EPITAPH FOR EVERYTHING
by
Sarah Betts
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY
Sarah Betts on Smashwords
An Epitaph for Everything
Copyright (C) 2011 by Sarah Betts
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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AN EPITAPH FOR EVERYTHING
I See
I walk the tight line of rigidity from a fear so deep of losing everything
You find your love for me in my soothed times, my slips, my quiet escapes from life’s entirety
I spend hours planning an hour’s meeting and when we meet by accident in the park, you love me in my exulting freedom
That I in that moment I find it hard to breathe through
Well that is how I see it
Free
And not knowing she was dead
She travelled over the waves like a child journeying happily home from school
She was known then in solitary walks walked down paths she had loved
She was in their canopy of rusted red and quiet gold
Even in absence she was loved
And while the ones who loved her slept, she saw the stars giving their last light to a silent moon
She never again knew a dark night
A Different Disease
And so it is it seems a different disease
Whole hearts swallow themselves from grief
That is Love
The curvature of beauty is when joyousness finds happiness in the feel of the weight of the other’s body
The warm reveal of love is finding skin old to Sun, known to rain but new to your fingertips
The grief of a death obscure is knowing the path across your lover’s skin to where his heart beats the hardest
The peace promised to every wretched living thing, is found by you in loving him
They Are Dead
And they are dead
And their house is no longer theirs; it is now a reasoning of reality, of the day to day
Buildings stand still while we give our souls to dust
A life lived was not a life lost but no answers in death were found
And I loved them
So late in life they were when in childhood they found me
Not born to me but still family
And love is finding Daisies long enough to thread while she watches and keeps me from touching
The electric fence
And safe is holding his large hand while walking to the shops, lifted by him above the potholes
And they are dead but I am not, and a house still stands filled with memory and love is so
Beautiful when it can live in a place that is empty
My Garden
A quiet death of rain
Mud puddles and admonished daisies with heads hung low.
Somehow greener though it seems with this grief
I am so delicate in my body skin, pale petals, clear innocent veins;
An easy target but in my garden I am safe
Tears to feed life, tears to take and then give again
Rain against the poppies that found themselves a home
They grow entwined then die alone
Forgiven
Quiet waves of thought took me from that other place
I lay now upon this new shore, a body new, a heart reborn
And it is the Sun of him that returns the light of dawn
Of Then
We told stories
Behind the bins, behind our hands
The stench of lies and rubbish was no trouble to us
In childhood all was well with a start, a middle and end
Sickness meant no school and death meant fizzy drinks in pub
Our stories were of films we hadn’t seen but imagined from their cover boxes
In them we were brilliant; we were princesses in happiness
We were women with bodies that loved
Beauty
Evening butterflies drift themselves higher
The twilight sky blushes into quiet
Alone my hand finds his in absence still
Though he is not here he is walking beside me seeing the beauty of it all
Morning
The 6.00 AM sky seems widowed to my eyes
As if it has lost it's great love the moon and is now blanched white from grief
Wires
Our wires are crossed but not over our hearts
They turn and curl away
Our hearts don’t beat for each other anymore
The days of skin cages carrying them to meet each other are gone
The Truth
If nothing was a colour
I would be a rainbow
Old Friend
You smell of mud and rivers and childhood
You speak as blades of green still hug your soles in clumps
Talk
We talk,
Not often but we do
You like a wall always find yourself gated just for me
Life as a Window
If only I could become as thin as glass and as transparent
Then I would not need to tell anyone how I felt because they would already see straight through me
I stared last night at a window which showed a blackened sky
And wished I were nothing enough to fits it's frame
But also sturdy in my emptiness to withstand all weather
Old Pain
There is an aching with the new, a sadness it sings of
A past it floated away from
A cold country that it is trying to forget
When I curl into sleep
The newness in my heart shivers as the past whispers memories
The chill turns dreams to warnings
Old pain stitches itself to new beginnings
I awake hung heavy with the past
Silence
Take silence the mother of all regret
The nurturing teat of doubt
Take silence and sing to it with every word you’ve learned since birth
Beg for its retreat
Seasons
A thousand seasons die and burn and wake and turn in this life unlived.
Days aching with heavy nothingness
Desires sought but broken to dust
A waiting of the quiet kind, nights sowed together by muted stars and silent moons
Empty days in empty rooms
True North
There are better places than me
Peaks higher than my highest heart to see
There are blue worlds of emotion
Oceans that ripple further and travel deeper
Than any sea of pure devotion my simple skin could offer
I am not a place to return to
I am not anyone’s true north
I am a forgotten earth where souls were sowed and desires reaped
Journey away from me
I am nothing you can keep
Second Hand
We read each other like books we gave away and other people have now
Underlined and torn the pages off
That War
Today I listened to the women talk about love
They spoke of marriage too but that was a different conversation
As I listened to them speak I did not feel like a casualty of that war; love
I felt like a deserter, perhaps one who had injured themselves to escape
One who had torn their heart from their chest just to leave the battlefield
Silent Garden
It was a silent garden into which I was allowed for a time
Peace came easy, sleep settled it
The sights were beautiful in their blossoming glory, colours brighter than those I had ever known
But I was not the Sun; I was not the light this garden craved
I lay among beauty, it brought itself gently to my skin, I dreamed through nights covered by it
Then winter came; cold and still, beauty froze and quietly I left the garden, never to return
The Moment When I...
I transcended, did you know that?
When I reached the highest of heights I saw us far below
Your mind shone like a glass cage and
Your thoughts appeared then like frightened birds
Pecking each other raw for company
Sleep
What a muddy little creature my heart had become
Growling and snarling for love
Bloody from the fight
Now quietly, quietly the rhythm fades
The building silence builds a peaceful cave
Now it sleeps quiet and content
Midnight Doll
Midnight Doll
She was a Midnight Doll
Torn seams and needles tracks
Talking to heaven and pausing only to bleed
A Midnight Doll left upon an unmade bed
With men’s sewer water for blood
And loves hollow promise a purple mark upon her head
Your Family
And you took your family, they said you took your family and buried them in the ground
You buried them too deep to breathe, too deep to see
Then you lay upon the dirt grave and cried for all you gave away
Excess
I cry a lot, for someone who has not just lost a dog or a relative
And I talk a lot for someone who has lost faith in what she says
Quiet
My heart turns circles
Like an animal trying to find rest
Quiet, quiet is the life that mourns nothing
Quiet is the soul that sees wanting for what it simply is
The sharper pain
Sacred
A body of pain settles and turns hours over until rest
A scream of silence epitaphs pain
The world is the world
The body is a temple
I breathe through my muscles pain
My alter burns
The Removal
You slip beneath the waves and drown yourself out
But for me removing you is like pulling the blade from a wound
Compassion
I watched my father kill fish
He did it with his bare hands; it did with love for me
Because I could not
I hooked and pulled them, let them shudder and shake in agony, I could do no more
He clutched them tight as he beat them against the bank
He laid their dead bodies in my hands
He let me see that he would kill for me
And leave me with the spoils
Butterfly
A dying butterfly climbed me today, as though I were a mountain
It crawled on slow legs with wings out stretched
I felt the whisper of its touch as it made its ascent
I wondered on its journey
What was it hoping to reach?
Would my body as its death place, bring it peace?
Lonely Dog in a Primary School Car Park
The winter coats of children have trapped me here
The innocence of their primary colours dulls my heart and slows my step
Then I am trapped
No greys here
How very on the outside I am
Not child nor parent or even owner of a blossom lonely womb
No greys allowed here
I am spinning tipped by singing fire engine reds and cutting summer sky blues
When I see him;
Lonely dog in a primary school car park
He must have followed a sugar smelling friend
His eyes find me then and our tawny dowdy hearts find each other
His eyes ask for someone to take him home
As I am sure do mine
Of Men
Men
I know a little bit about men
I know that when you find the one you want you have
To be gentle
You must handle him like clay warming him with you
Words, so that he will bend for you
You must stroke, massage and knead the man
And that’s before you touch his penis
The Places You’ll Go
Yes the pain is full of emptiness and the journey through it could be endless if your mind wanders
Feel it though
Feel it all, there is no victory for the unscathed as they will find themselves forever caught in the fear of the blow
You will be alone
More than you realise, more than you want but hopefully never more than you need
Sometimes something to believe in is just; something to believe in and you cannot take it with you
Momentary
The night takes its own breath as I hold mine
The stars appear to tired eyes like glass marred by water
The water of my eyes wants to pour away and take my muscles with it
Wants to trickle away and leave my bones in a pile outside this house
Like sticks for the fire waiting to be lit
Mute
I am being muted, like a colour that finds itself greying
Perishable and aging I am all that I stand for and I simply stand
There is no turn to this tide, I let its waves slip against my legs, I adsorb its salt
There is no incident in this, I could forever wait and in memories drown
When in waiting I journey too deep
I remember a time when I was his and each passing moment turned us to be closer like a
Minute hand reaching the hour
The Clocks
As a child I sat within a house once, with a woman who moved from room to room
Stopping all the clocks because her love had died
The seconds stopped as I watched
Lover my clocks are still ticking
The Figurative Heart
He is not a fan of the Figurative Heart
For his beats strong and steady
It feels no effect of whims or wants
It is a bloody organ that has no dreams to share and no desire under its skin
First Love Lost
I have been naming the mice I've been catching
I keep them for a couple of hours before setting them free
The trap they enter is painless; they are drawn by a sweet scent of something, a promise
And yes it is fear at first that quickens their heart but they thrill also for the new
They begin to forget that they are trapped; they begin to accept their cage
It is somewhere different and they brought themselves there for a reason
I never want to free them, bring them out into the cold
But I always do
And as I watch them flee I always wonder if they will remember the trick played on them
The empty promise
I do
Undecided
Your indecision eroded me
Your fickle wanting tore my skin
But then in the end the fatal blow came with your final decision
Taking What Is Left
It is dying in my bottom drawer, etched to paper
It is etched to me but I am silent, father
They no longer ask, they know me to be who I am
Someone born without, someone with a right denied
I cannot say I love you
Father
I miss you father
Like an abandoned dog misses their violent master
The Release
Your voice turns with your words
I am still a pretty girl
But I’m not your girl anymore
You try to set me free with without killing me
And like a gunshot shocked bird
I trembled on my freedom before tumbling blindly forth into it
The Man I Love
The man I love he has just stepped out of the room
I’m sure he will return soon
He must know that I am waiting for him
The man I love gives his skin to me when I am cold; he presses his body to me when I am lonely
He always says: “You won't be lonely anymore”
He always says “I love you”
I am a flower to him, a small precious pink one and he holds me gently so as not to crush my petals
The man I love has been gone a long time but I’m sure he will return soon
He must know I’m waiting for him
The Spring Time of Denial
Oh dear you are gone and the Spring Time of Denial has begun to bloom in my mind
Buds of disappointment are growing now into blossoms of lost hopes
Showers of sorrow nurture dangerous delusions
Alone my garden grows
Ex
How does it feel, your life without me?
Am I Ophelia dead in a pool of Lilies, beautiful in your mind?
Or did I die like a stray dog in an alley, away from your world?
Do you still dream of my hair?
I am still your Rapunzel who let it down to let you in?
Or am I a ship wreck that you escaped and you assume has sunk to the bottom of the ocean?
The End
The end would be like glass breaking into water
A solidity destroyed by the fragility of reason
Then I could turn myself to clay
And dry and bare, the only desire I would hold
Would be that your hands could warm me
Effigy
I'm glad that the tap now hides the spider from my view
It is dead and another has crawled upon it
Looking at that now would be like looking at us
Superhero
Shadows show his arms like the wings of an impressionist Christ
Jesus; the original superhero
In this light or lack there of
This man too could be a saviour
Gin
Boy, you left my heart in a half cracked mess
I had to finish it myself
So I drank a lot of Gin and spent the night in a strange man’s bed
In the morning I made my way home
My tangled hair caught in my coat and pieces of myself rattling in my chest
Apathy
It is a quiet death that I now die
I was taken from eyes with the violence of a blackbird snatching pupils
Now though their blood has settled and to them I am just another sad soul who regrets themselves
Our Bird
My father and I put a feather on a paper bird
I was eight and he was tall
He rose me to the wings
I stretched my fingers up and pushed with the tips
He gripped me tight as I pressed our decorated feather to the multi coloured wing
I remember we were alone
The others had run, the rain was coming
But we were brave; we wanted that bird to fly
I had a smile for him as he brought me to the ground
And then the rain found my face
His large hand caught my wrist and we ran beneath some roofed place
From there we had a view of the bird
The rain was cleansing it of its clear colours
Mixing its bright reds and greens into muddy browns
Its paper gave way to the greater force of merciless rain
Its black dot eye bled into a tear
And my father led me away then from that sight, a death we could not prevent
His step was slow with the disappointment that comes from a fruitless task
But I knew that some part of us had shone bright in that colourful funeral flood
I don’t miss my father I wish that I could
The Invitation
I have this memory of my mother and her friend walking me to a party
I was six and skipping in dress I hardly ever wore
My mother and her friend artists both of them
Were free in t-shirts that hung large and large over their breasts
Talk came about to where the party might be
We had arrived at an estate; a cold river-less place, the kind in which I never played
My mother could not walk those paths made wide enough for prams and fringed with grass
Growing only as high as that kind of grass was allowed to grow.
She came to my level I remember and spoke the words:
"You’ll be fine from here, just look for balloons."
It was a small universe to her I suppose and she stood at its edge as I journeyed on alone
I’m sure she stayed, though she fell from my view
I’m sure she stood steady on the outside, alongside the crisp packet and the drink can refuse, litter on the outskirts of a clean place
Was I scared then?
Now I believe I am, for she is even more gone
I found the balloons
The colour of that place rose up to me, with its streamers and voices and fathers in cars
I had my dress and my present wrapped so I was given a plate and place to sit, I was so
jubilantly taken in
But now in memory I ’m sure I could not have felt safe with my mother so far away
You and I, Lover
Within the earliest sun of morning
I want us to smile to each other behind hands that have spent
The night hours grasping and keeping the heat our journeying skin creates
I want to shade beneath your out stretched arm in the spin of a dance we are slowly
Turning before twilight’s picture of the sun’s goodnight kiss
And when night cradles our bodies, I want to taste the day on you;
The salt of sea we have swum, across your hips, across my tongue…
THE END
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About the author:
Sarah Betts was born in 1984 in Dublin, Ireland. She is a creative writing student living in London.
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