Like spilt milk
later to sour
an immediate response
to cleanse
wasn’t enough.
A whiteness that
blanked out what
we had been
like our love
lost consciousness.
Now after, the hours of it all
we face each other
in anticipation
hold a canvas cleared.
Dip your hand with me
to paint the next.
© Ali Grimshaw 2019
absent stood out
on the page of my day,
like sharp yellow highlighter,
biting bright contrast,
to your slight soft smile.
Remembering our laughter
mixed with the warm sunlight smell
of blackberries, overripe
with the end of this season,
some clinging to the vine.
© Alicia Grimshaw 2019
As we shift to the next, there is a tension of holding on and letting go. I feel this as I experience goodbyes and new places. Sending love to anyone who is saying farewell and transitioning with this season. Let’s welcome in the new colors that arrive with this change.
Just as she reached for the door
tear stained cheeks accompanied trembling
a last glance back.
Too numb, her sadness departed months ago.
The ringing phone called out to her
a nick of time, just right hesitation
before the unchangeable conclusion
could be undone.
© Alicia Grimshaw 2017
“Sometime round about the 1580s the phrase in the nick or in the very nick began to be used for the critical moment, the exact instant at which something has to take place. The idea seems to have been that a nick was a narrow and precise marker, so that if something was in the nick it was precisely where it should be.” http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-nic2.htm
National Suicide Prevention Week – click here for resources
Where to go to return
to the tranquil, a friend
you used to know so well?
Hours spent creekside
holding rocks, one by one
their colors glow wet with water
slowing your breath with
the simple love for a moment
of just being alive.
© Alicia Grimshaw 2017
Breath from within me floats out to join yours,
to settle on the brown ground beside
join the atmosphere’s chorus
sing with our exhale.
The tree we sit beneath is not excluded from our song.
Lightly soft, it hums new life down upon us.
With static on the radio world leaders move their pieces, play tunes of war.
Under the tree we continue to breathe each other.
© Alicia Grimshaw 2017/Rewrite 2019
Thank you to Brian Geiger at Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine for sharing my voice this week by publishing, Transient. Click on the title to give it a read and while you are there savor some of the words from amazing poets.
Vita Brevis Press is a small publisher dedicated to emerging and established poets, circulating their work in an online magazine and in physical anthologies. The Vita Brevis Poetry Magazinepublishes some of the best emerging poets out there, pairing their work with tonally relevant artwork.
why are we so afraid of
the tender, exposure of
inside, gently cradled by
toughness skinned over
unconscious callousness
from days of survival,
thick with not letting
anyone in, to touch
the real, born within us.
© Ali Grimshaw 2019
THE TENDERNESS PROJECT IS AN EXPERIMENT IN RADICAL EMPATHY CURATED BY ROSS GAY AND SHAYLA LAWSON. IT RECOGNIZES THE TENDERNESSES THAT APPEAR IN THE MARGINS AND LIGHTS THESE TINY SPACES.
flashlight batteries - Ali Grimshaw 