Poetry by Donna L Greenwood

​Absent

You always looked politely bored,
Smiling but absent
As you pencilled life into the
Creeping vines entwining
The lines of your book.
How rude, I’d think, while sanding
The sparkle off youthful eyes.
 
At the end of class you would resurrect
And sit on the edge of my desk and tell
Me how your parents were
At their wits end.  If only you would eat.
If only you would tell them why.
And I would nod wisely.
 
One day you drew a butterfly
And flew it all around
And you told me it was a thank you
For listening.  The others
Don’t understand, you murmured.
I didn’t understand.  I’d just learned
How to give the illusion of listening
Whilst planning a lesson.
 
And then a girl-shaped hole appeared
And poured black all over the day.
Your wet-eyed friend wept
And whispered you’d died.
And I laughed.  Because young girls -
Especially those with frosted eye-lashes
And freckles like gold-dust -
Did not just die.
 
For a short time, in the staffroom,
We talked about the futility and the sadness
And the waste of young blah de blah life
Whilst doodling our own red scribbles
Over the work of girls who would soon
Disappear from our lives -
Just as you did-
Only they will leave as solid
And vital as trees
And you will merely be
A memory
Fluttering and flickering
An ever diminishing light
Until you fade away
Like a child’s breath
On a frosted pane.




Insomniac

I awaken
Imperfect.
The mOOn falls
And spills milk-light
Onto white flesh lying
On pillOwed slab.
Eye-lids stretching
Over skull
My
hO
                   hO
hOpe feathers
And shreds intO
White paper
Skin on wrOng bones.
The mOnstrous sky
Holes my mind and
Rips out a shrill lucidity
The terrible brightness
Sears my heart and
Shrieks it into flames
And tears apart the
Child InnOcence
And sucks out her sanity
And devOurs legs and eyes and lungs.
My mOuth twists into O
                       O
O
But I
CannOt scream down
The spectacular hOrror
Of nOthing - rioting through
The night and gObbling up
The last remains
Of
Cer
tain
ty.


​
BIO: Donna L Greenwood is a writer of weird stuff who lives in the north of England with her anti-social cat and slightly more sociable daughter.