Crockery

My crazy paved heart.
Jagged shards.
Unmatched patterns.
Unnumbered memento mori
to floral fragments of time.
Pierced, mismatched, shattered again.
On the rough edge of forgotten.
Momentum suspended
upon filamental fears.
Hope filling spaces between:
glue holding broken
porcelain pieces together.
Like layers of greying newspaper.
Feathered pages placed between chipped plates,
mugs, and bowls every time we moved.
Until we stopped bothering to unpack.

Below the bridge

From the deck, I appreciate the view,
but sliding alongside the bridge
there’s a living thing. Connective tissue.
Monumental, vulnerable.
Piers and piles driven into the bedrock
lost beneath the surface,
looking like tide-marked, ring-barked,
mud-implanted concreted legs,
squat thighs, old knees obscured in dark water.
Substructures: the under-bridge world,
absent even of blinks of reflected light
from unceasing ripples
passing boats like mine
leave in their wake.

Shadow

We take it in turns.
Sometimes I follow, then I am followed.
As above, so below.
When I can’t see you, we converge.
We’re not the same, nonetheless
our pattern forms the dance.

Rebecca Dempsey’s works are forthcoming or featured in Elsewhere Journal, Ligeia, and Schuylkill Valley Journal Online. Rebecca holds a Masters of Writing and Literature from Deakin University, lives in Melbourne, Australia, and can be found at WritingBec.com.