Shared

At the bookshop at the end of my road three women read last night.

Their poems opened inner worlds and the tears smarted in the pauses and transitions.

I leaned into bruises of the collective moment, of strangers connected, grateful to be able to feel again.

It is what came next - the words, catches in throats after, the stories around the words 

That caught my my heart-mind and twisted the knife I carry inside myself,

That small dagger that reminds me Hindsight is precarious, a red lion,

That geography is more than a map, more than veins on the back of my hands, the marbling squish of flesh, inside or out.

(It also became very clear that I really need to stop carrying the remnants of my dead in glass jars. Anyone having a Tupperware party?)