I’ve made myself good so many times that my very edges
have blurred like a penciled line scrubbed too many times
With old pink rubber. I sit in this light wet end of July and
Try to visualise myself several months down the line.
Weighed down by bitter lemon juice and old feuds
I am 22, not world weary, but I’ll never be thin in
The right dimension or plump for the right time
To scramble onto higher plans and attempt a pathetic yawp.
You see my lit up phone screen on the table.
I am a bulging vessel of negative wants; lick the sugar off the rim,
Collect old letters, bitten down nails, new loves, nighttime portfolios,
Craft several careers with dried flower petals forgotten between the pages.
I want a vocabulary lifted from Homer and something more myself;
I’ll break in my new shoes like a personality trait,
They are a little tight at the heel – achilles!
I’ll scoff a whole packet of jaffa cakes instead of cooking dinner – kummerspeck!
I’ll stomp around the park
And try not to care that the cloudburst spoils my hair.
Hmm but really, curdled woman, non-poet; who would read it?
Pasted, seen, known by dissenters who barely
Loved or knew or heard when their time was ripe.
Removed, rewritten, zapped from the photographs I took,
There are worse things now. Why did it have to get so dark?
I shower slowly and rub cocoa butter over my collarbones and
Down my legs and across my cheeks until I smell good again.
***
H. R. Gibs, also known as Hannah Gibson, is a Belfast journalist based in Dublin in pursuit of an MA. Hannah claims she is no poet but could try if only her ego would let her. She can be found on twitter: @hrgibs.
***
image: Cas Hendrickson
Rejection Letters 