Jessica Penrose poems

Outside-in inside-out

Poems by Jessica Penrose

I
I stand at the sink, staring,
as the clock swallows another chunk of day.
It’s mid-morning
and nothing has happened.
The world is about its business
and I am still standing here.
The kitchen looks the same
as it did a moment ago;
and in this moment;
and in this.

II
I go upstairs, forgetting what I went up for.
I come downstairs, forgetting why.
I will lose myself between floors,
between exits and entrances.
The stairs will roll up around me.
I will fall and be caught in their treads –
fall and be caught.

III
I am in between;
off camera;
a pause you pass through.
The fallout of your life
may catch in my clothes,
dam up against my thighs,
seep into my shoulder blades.
I will be breakwater
and water fall.
You will run aground on me,
and remember.

IV
Pick me up
and put me
in your pocket,
slip me in
beside your car keys.
I will still be there
tomorrow
when you have forgotten me.

V
I sleep alone,
adrift in my wide bed,
barely moving
between white walls,
white ceiling, white sky.
You may not visit me here.
The floor is the colour
of a sea you cannot cross.

VI
I am all there is
scratched on these walls,
scattered across cushions,
gathered up in dust
against the skirting boards.
These few books, this borrowed furniture,
speak less of me
than the dream of attic rooms,
opening.

VII
I will shape-shift through your certainties
through the right and wrong of you,
surefooted, burning.

Jessica Penrose 2004