I'll...

I'm making myself a map, covered in red stitches and blue ink, books of fluttering pages pinned down, wishes made into plans somewhere between my ribs amongst midnights and witching hours... This is past work, sent as a portfolio in the hope that a dream will turn into maps and plane tickets in my hand. This is some of what I am; fairy tales, words on white, silk stitches and still snow, tales of this land and the land itself, Irish and green, superstitions and the sea, I'm that weather watcher gathering charms and the rains washing in...

And this is a work in progress, written one summer night;

I’ll draw down the rains. I’ll call up a storm.
I’ll bargain at the crossroads,
that time, that place
I’ll shut my mouth; store up the heart-sore ah’s
and those floating butterfly oh’s until you tear
them from me.
I’ll build castles brick
by brick,
a house of cards to come tumbling down.
I’ll stitch in the stars and still the night,
I’ll steal away the hours
and hide them between the coffee and the jams.
I’ll cloak myself in the blue of that sky and the strength of days,
wrapped around me like a blanket,
still nothing to your heat;
quiet and scorching,
like August on the sills.
I’ll tie up my hair, and keep it for only you;
curl by dark,
bewitched curl.
Something to unwind
like honeysuckle in the night,
heady and damp.
And still I’ll charm those apples and I’ll tell the bees
I’ll lay aside that honeyed halo
and I’ll befriend that fickle sea
All this
until you come home to me.

All lists of intent, words and wills and I'll set my will now, because scars create strength... Today is green and turf fires, high smoky skies and we're still in-between. Today I love tulips, I love popcorn and films flickering in the dark, I'll always love tea and cake and laughter and hate inconsiderate words or actions. Today the woman I am is barefoot, she wears red like a charm, and she's not there yet but she can feel that familiar sense of hope...

The Word Girl

At night I don’t sleep, I can’t, not when the sky is so black and blue, and if I do my dreams are so dark and deep waking from them is like finding my way through a maze; its high thorn hedges casting deep and dangerous shadows. Each morning my eyes and pillows are stained black from tears I’ve cried in my sleep, I can never tell if it’s yesterday’s make-up or that black ache I feel in my heart. And so I don’t sleep, I write, pouring ink onto paper with my heart; stories, poetry and ideas, snippets of beautiful things, a comfort, a distraction from the dark. Each morning my fingers are covered in ink, as blue as the dawn, and is that the mark of a writer? My mother says I was born to this; before I knew the alphabet, before there was school and exercise books full of copied letters, I was writing, covering pages in tiny ooooooooo’s, broken like words on an inked page, telling my parents with all the exasperation a toddler can muster that I was writing a story, as if they were in my way or costing me time. And so these twenty something years later I write, words now, magical, strange, distracting words; my comfort blanket, my saviour; for a word, after a word, after a word is power…. *

I’m wishing for a new start, and snow, always snow; days quiet and still and full of possibilities, days wrapped in blankets and nights full of stars, but my world is constantly grey and dirty, everything is damp around the edges and confused. A blackbird sits outside my window calling in the spring, snowdrops fringe the emerging green like lace, that same green dances nightly behind the clouds overhead and yet the grey remains, like March come early, keeping us in-between…
Today was that grey, the hours felt late and smokey and the tea tastes off. Today I love blankets, wrapped around me in the night, I love the silk roses blooming across my skin, and that ring like armour, my magpie distraction, a scrying stone, I love the green of this land, earthy and ancient and long for the sea, I love books as always, words on white and I loathe rash actions and stinging words, spilt like venom without care… Today the woman I want to be sleeps soundly and that ache is gone, her midnights are happy and never spent alone, she dances beneath those whiling stars and the only blackness in her life is her raven hair…
*Margret Atwood- Spelling