Billabong Blue

March 10, 2016 ~ hiraethphoenix

For me longing
Is a blue Billabong jersey
And Colbie Callait’s Realize on the radio.
I was 27 and believed I had found my
Soul, sole mate.
In that moment
Before I paid for a top I carefully selected,
A hoodie, a present for him
(Not to bold, not too much print)
I realised
That I could not change him, fix him, mould him into what would make me whole.
I realised
He was using drugs
I realised
He would break me.
I left him and wore that hoodie the
Entire weekend.
It was covered in snot and tears.
And I survived,
With “only a surfer knows the feeling”
And a giant wave
Engraved across my heart.
I survived
Even though walking away was
Fucking hard,
Lonely.
I survived it in a Blue Billabong top.
Longing doesn’t change as you get older,
I still associate it with the same things.
But it does get easier.
You realise you will survive,
That there is always beauty and renewal, a kindness to the universe,
A treasure trove of memories engraved
Upon your soul.
And on the bad days
You reach for that Billabong hoodie
And cover it in snot,
Tears,
You pull it over your unkept hair
And hide from the cruelty
That takes away what you love,
Whom you love.
And then you take the top off,
Toss it in the wash
And you survive.

Summer with you

April 19, 2015April 19, 2015 ~ hiraethphoenix

Winter stayed and wept
wearing an oversized jersey,
frayed, unkept.
It mourned for all I lost,
the innocence of youth,
all it cost.
It nearly kept spring at bay,
I had to threaten:
“go now, you cannot stay.”
Spring arrived dressed in blue,
all smiles and jokes
and then I knew:
Summer could be coaxed to stay,
it just needed a reason,
a way.
And before I knew,
there was one:
You.

Copyright Hiraeth 2015
PAD Challenge 2015 Day 11:
For today’s prompt, write a seasonal poem. This should be a snap for haiku poets; after all, inserting seasonal words is a rule for the form. However, you don’t have to write haiku to write a poem that references or happens in one of the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Pick a season or include them all.

He/she

February 19, 2015 ~ hiraethphoenix ~ Leave a comment

He never said
So you never knew
That he offered all he could
Instead you focussed on lack
On what he could not give
And the more he gave, the more
You met him with resistance
But he never said
So you never knew
That he loved you night as day
All the forms of you
Instead you felt unnoticed
Wilting like a flower left to fend
Alone
But he never said
So you never knew
That he missed you morning to night
Every second, hour, day
Instead you focussed on his ego
The I-don’t-need-you-and-never-did
But he never said
So you never knew
If only he said,
If only you
had
known.

That jersey

January 31, 2015March 10, 2015 ~ hiraethphoenix ~ Leave a comment

It’s in the quiet moments, the ones where I watch clouds gather around the mountain, dressing it in a jersey of longing. The ones where the waves fiercely rush to the shore and then retreat in regret. The ones where I watch my children play in an world where happy endings exist into infinity, there is no question how the story ends. In these moments I think of you and wish you were here, wish I could hear your voice. But I know you would have me comfortably wearing that jersey, over-sized and slightly frayed, dancing barefoot on the beach in complete faith: one day there is a happy ending in which we reunite and it stretches to infinity.

Hiraeth

May 7, 2014 ~ hiraethphoenix ~ Leave a comment

Hiraeth it will be
This intricate part
The poet inside
Of me
A search for self,
Longing thread amongst
Her words,
Forgiveness sown in
Paragraphs, self loathing
In punctuation marks.
You might recognise some
Part of you
Somewhere in her lines,
Since all are longing:
Some ignore the signs.