Anne Taylor

What Will You Do with Yours?

Will you sing it into a cedarwood coffin
filled with petals, or peg it to a washing line,
willing a rough breeze to snatch it
carry it

into someone else’s garden.
You could tug it down and press it stiff,
steaming out its creases, telling it all the time
not now, not him, not me, not again.

Or will you melt it like chocolate in a small pan
until it bubbles soft sticky, almost palatable.

The done thing is to frame it of course,
stand it neatly at your bedside.

Or you could bottle it as vinegar,
which some say doesn’t have a shelf life.

Or smash it hard, time and time again,
like a ball against the sea wall,
squeeze it like an egg in your fist,
testing its strength, and your own.

Put it down like heavy shopping that has
bitten into the lines of your tender fingers.

Tell me.

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Anne Taylor is a poet and teacher based in Cornwall and London, UK. She is seeking ways to grow old with grace and elegance with the help of her three wise children and a pesky dog. Her work has been published in Uneasy Heads, on PoetryandCovid.com and is soon to appear in Cornish Modern Anthologies published by Broken Sleep books. She won second prize in the international Cornwall Contemporary Poetry competition 2018.