dreormeadow

[dreormeadow]

Do you want to catch up sometime?

I will test the water tediously. 

Malicious and monotonous. 

One toe at a time.

I count ripples as grief. 

Slow is a preventative measure,

To ease myself into empty. 

There is nothing I hate more

Than water alone. 

I’m quick to jump to survival,

A reflex I can't turn off.

I equate survival with drowning.

I ration my sinking.

Memorise the ache of muscle,

The burn of wet lungs. 

I don’t need you to die with me,

All I ask is that you don’t watch.

Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Soft and slow beyond the creek,

I watch them dance,

I watch them sleep.

I long to know that kind of peace.

The wind forgets to stir the leaves

But still there's whispers in the trees.

They walk along the sandy shore,

Legs tan and long,

I’m getting bored.

I used to glow like them, I think.

I want to drown them,

Watch them sink.

Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

If God Won’t Listen, You Might

Standing on the shore, I am desperate to drown, 

aching to wade in, split my spine against the silt.

Swallow me whole, please?

I want to pinpoint every undercurrent.

Embrace the vestibular response

of shifting gravity. 

I keep praying for rain, arguing with God,

anything to draw you closer.

I try to remember how to be gentle.

I skip rocks across the surface,

testing the tension.

I like the way laughter ripples through you.

I hold a grudge against God,

for the way light worships you, 

earth-shattering refraction, causing tender miosis. 

I bring you offerings of sticks and sun,

I don’t think they are enough.

You deserve more than marrow.

I sit with you, searching the banks 

for anything I can throw at you.

You never flinch. 

I wonder if God can hear me screaming,

if She understands my impatience,

if it will rain next week.

Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Time moves differently when

I'm waiting for you.

I’m killing the time,

finding the places where light doesn't reach.

I collect minutes

as markers for your absence,

count each one aloud,

swallow the seconds.

They curdle in my stomach.

Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Salt in the Veins of God: Divinity Drowns Differently

Selene pulls ventricles like tides. Nocturnally, she ascends steep sternal stars. Ethereal column of composure, she pulls piety from heresy, commanding cosmic compliance. Reverently, she respires oceanic lungs, fusing the currents of time and space under starlit canopy. Feigning ignorance to ardent eyes.

Poseidon swells with patient devotion. Amusement gleaming across frozen features like sunlight filtering through rippling water. He indulges her righteous pretense, captivated by her waxing and waning, tethering earth to axis. She beckons his rise and fall, and he submerges in fervent worship.

At dawn, fate finally fractures, sovereignty and sea, casting holy refraction. Soft silver slivers trace shadows on phosphorescent waves, while bioluminescent bulbs illuminate disphotic chambers below, sifting sediment on shipwreck and sand. Archimedes’ principle is woven in their blood, a constant reminder of their return to equilibrium. Their descent is a slow awakening, buoyed only by the sunset—a gentle rebellion against stagnation. Fractal branches stretch like veins, unfurling delicate pathways for dark oxygen. Seeds of divinity sow deep into molecules, binding them beyond the boundaries of flesh and folklore.

Eventually the sun seals her beyond his reach.

Iridescent bubbles suspend, shimmering in his blood, stagnant without her gravity. He waits, a restless sentinel beneath the waves, seeking soft silver refraction. Star-crossed secrets dissolve in seafoam. Salt clots pearls in his ventricles, tangent oblations of tomorrow. He settles soft on sand, his eyes, ever-devout, return to the sky, each wave washing aching prayer across his chest, awaiting her ascension.

Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Moss Mouth

There is moss in my mouth.

I speak in green Latin,

my breath softens the glass,

my teeth split spores, crush chlorophyll.

I haven’t eaten in years.

Hunger still finds me.

I reach with a rhizoid tongue,

for something with a pulse.

The tulips bloom beneath my gaze.

This one is my favourite.

Tulipa gesneriana. Petals part with a sigh.

I press my lips to the soil.

I am everything but patient.

This earth tastes like a memory,

I can no longer name.

Reaching for softness, straight from the vein.

If I am soft will the tulips still bloom?

Will they still come gently undone?

Bleed blossom down my throat,

in velvet purple and pink.

The vines wind tighter,

slow around my ankles.

I don’t fight them. Not anymore.

They thread my ribs devoutly.

I am bound to earth by vine.

They remind me I chose this.

Tangle truth through my thoughts.

Sweet and rotting through my roots.

Still the tulips call,

bending towards my fingertips.

Mouthing something I can’t hear,

teaching me tenderness.

His longing was always brighter than mine.

Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Sunstruck

Effortlessly warm and sentimental. Of course you would pick this café. I don’t even know if you realise why you picked it, but I know. Our conversation feels out of place here, a sharp blade in a soft wound.

I knew you would be early, so I made sure I was a few minutes late. I wanted to see you wait. You did, patient and understanding as ever in the warm glow of the café. When I finally walk in, you stand, pulling out my chair, just like I knew you would. I know why you wanted to see me, but I’ve never had what you’re looking for.

You already ordered for me. Of course you did, because you think you still know what I want.

Soft jazz fills the room. You offer me apologies, drenched in sincerity. I leave them, sticky on the table for the waitress to wipe away. You offer me condolences and sympathy, I crumple them in my napkin, pushing them aside to make room for my cup. You offer me money. It almost makes me laugh.

You don’t bring her up, but she’s here. I can see her, lingering at the edges, your cheek, your collar. You think that I won’t notice.

I look past you, to the glass, where the light filters funny, breaking in strange ways behind your head. I wonder what you made her for breakfast, how it tasted, if you brought it to her in bed. I think about her hair, her smile, her nails. You two look good together. Right together. We always looked odd together; not that anyone ever saw us. Really, you were the only one who ever did see me.

It was the only thing I ever could give you. Secrecy.

My coffee tastes bitter. I can hear the waitress repeating specials, her voice drifting through me like static, while you sit across from me, certain I’m the one who went wrong. You still blame me. You don’t know what I did for you. I gave you this. Everything you have with her is because of me. A kindness neither of us knew I was capable of. You still call it cruelty.

I ask about her, just to watch you squirm. Your face is red. You tell me she is well, and pregnant, then change the subject. I don’t bring her up again. You ask about me, the way someone might ask about the weather, an obligatory kindness. I play along, pushing shapes that sound like sentences around the table, stacking them into neat piles for you. You think I’m letting you win. Giving you something, but really I’m just buying time.

You tell me she misses me, they all miss me, I should come over, sometime soon. I wonder if she pities me. I imagine her smirking over your shoulder. All of them smirking. Dousing me in their condescending care. I can feel it dripping down my back. I look at your watch. I watch through the windowpane as a cloud covers the sun. You search my face, trying to maintain eye contact. I’m still scrambling for time.

There are black and white triangles on the floor. I try to count them. You tell me about all the times you almost called. You want to know if I’m still living alone. If I have talked to anyone about it. I refuse to give you this. This is the only thing that’s still mine. I don’t ask how much you told her, I already know how you feel about honesty. I ask if she will tell anyone. This is something you don’t give me.

You tell me that no one blames me.

I congratulate you. On all of it. I tell you: this is what you deserve. I look you in the eye. You flinch. You don’t know how sincere I’m being. You don’t know what I have planned.

I let my coffee go cold in my cup. I don’t fill the silences. I watch the cream clot. I ask you if she sleeps well. You don’t understand this game. You think I’m building to something. Some sharp stab. You wish I would stab you. It would make this easier.

I watch the waitress balancing trays on her arms. You shift in you chair. Desperate for resolution, for closure, for something to fill the gaping guilt I left inside you. You want me to make this okay. Tenderly reassure you I’m fine, I’ve moved on. You ask me if I’m okay.

The waitress walks past again, I see it in her gaze, she recognises the game. You still haven’t caught on.

You tell me you want to be my friend.

I cant help it, I burst out laughing hysterically. I’m not even here anymore, there are tears rolling down my cheeks, my face is bright red. People are turning in their chairs. I have drowned myself in some grief-shaped cave. Trying to save You. Her. Them. Your unborn child. Maybe even the waitress at this point. Trying to do something good. Trying to be good. You don’t even see it. And I can’t stop laughing.

I remember the summer you tried to teach me to swim. You held me, just above the surface, hands steady, voice calm, as I thrashed and kicked like something feral. The water was too vast, too blue, I knew it was waiting to swallow me. I hated how exposed I felt, skin to sky, nerves to sun, but you wouldn’t let go. Not back then. You pulled me to shore when I tired myself out, gently wrapped me in your towel, like I was something worth preserving. We lay on the sand and you reassured me for hours, over and over, stroking my hair, until I started to believe it.

I came home that summer velvet-blushed, sun-warmed and dazed, while you stood gilded in gold. That’s when I realised how much the sun loves you, how the world orbits around you, and how much I wanted to be part of it. To feel something warm, gold, and good, tangible to my fingers. I was sure I would drown, but you never let my head slip below the water.

You know I never wanted to be your friend. That was always your line, not mine. I push your olive branch back across the table. At this point it’s more splinter than offering. I told you I had no use for kindling.

You flinch, like I wacked you across the face with your stupid stick.

The waitress takes our cups. Wipes the table. And you still haven’t realised.

The blade is already in my stomach. This is what I’m giving you. This is the plaster, the mercy. If I am cruel, then you are innocent. I am falling on my sword.

Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

The First Night I Dreamt of You

i.

The night was still whispering when I woke,

light bleeding slow, blue between curtains,

spilling soft into the silence.

It touched everything gently,

the wall, the floor,

my shoulder, like a blessing

I didn’t know how to receive.

I didn’t move.

I let it lay against the side of my face,

as if staying still could hold the dream in place.

As if you might be here,

just beyond the reach of waking,

your name still coiling around my ribs.

The light kept coming.

Soft. Certain.

And I stayed

like something waiting to be chosen.

ii.

The morning didn't rush.

It spilled tender across the room,

stroking the edges of things I hadn’t yet named.

No urgency,

just the quiet ceremony

of light finding me where I lay.

I thought of you then,

not as absence,

but as promise.

Like the way the sun returns

even when the stars feel a little closer.

Like breath, returning before it’s called.

A little fated.

The dream had already begun slipping away,

but it left something behind:

not your hand,

not your voice

but the quiet shape of hope,

settling soft beneath my sternum.

And I rose,

not because the moment ended,

but because it had finally begun.

Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Something Borrowed, Something Bruised

I want a love I cannot break,

one that survives the centrifuge.

Even if I hurl it at the moon,

even if I carve it into my femur,

it doesn’t scatter like particulate matter.

I want a love that crawls from the wreckage,

calcified and radioactive.

That smiles with blood in it’s teeth,

that knows what I did to the last one,

and stays anyway.

I want a love that ferments in the dark,

gilded with carrion grace.

A love that calls my collapse a resurrection,

and keeps fresh roses on my grave.

That understands: even ruins deserve reverence.

Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Palatability for the Corpse in My Poetry

I swear limerence is my default setting. I want. I want. I want. I want. Always to the side. I never know. You know? I hope so. I imagine. You in a crewneck. You rolling the sleeves of your button up. You in blue jeans. Or black jeans. Brushing the hair off my cheek. The colour of your car (I hope you have a car). Our kitchen.

All I write about it ache. Everything is the same. Every page I write is dripping with twenty-three years of lonely blood. I want to write about feathers and grace and kindness but all that comes out is mangled desire. Who comes to poetry for a corpse?

This feels like a distinct lack of gratitude. Criminal obsession with a singular fault. How long have I been lonely for? I swear I never was but in company it spills out of me till I’m alone in my car gaping. There are gaps under my skin I never found. There is really only one topic I am drawn to write about. Everything else comes out wrong And this comes out ugly.

I have been thinking a lot about palatability. I want to be easy to swallow. Consumed in under a minute, a pleasant addition to your break. I don’t know how to make myself easier to digest and this isn’t helping. somehow I think this is worse.

I need pretty poems, backgrounds and carousels. Four lines of relatable. One of sting. Something that touches people the way they consent to. I want quiet poems. I don’t want to bleed.

For almost a year now I have been writing one poem. Every piece is the same, same words, same topic same line breaks. I enrolled at uni to be pushed but I can never do what I’m told. I argue with everything, fighting for my shitty angst. All I have is this angst, without it I don’t write, the same six words I have loved since 2016.

God I hope I can write something new. Sweet and light and careful.

- Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

I am looking for the lamb inside the box. I swear I used to see her—soft, delicate, and brimming with promise—but lately, I find it hard to see anything beyond the paper.

There is something inside me that I lost between fifteen and twenty-three. I can’t remember what it is, and honestly, I’m unsure if it was ever truly there. Only the gaping absence reminds me of what once might have been. Occasionally I am granted glimpses, as the sun slips below the horizon, but too often I am left, secluded by the stagnancy.

I am aching for independence yet I stumble before the starting line every time. I no longer feel like I am learning to crawl but my legs still collapse beneath me before I can run.

Everything inside me shifts like sand beneath my feet, unsteady and elusive. I float through time and space, ambiguous and untethered. I can daydream but when it comes time for action I fold like a fearful fawn, retreating to places where I cannot be touched.

- Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Choices We Don’t Make

I hate motels. I think I can hear electricity.

The vending machine hums in a dialect I want to understand.

There’s a shoe stuffed in the icebox,

And a name hanging by the door, locked behind teeth.

My shadow doesn’t follow me.

It darts ahead, waiting for me around every corner.

This morning it packed a suitcase.

I didn’t ask where it's going. We know it’s over.

I think I buried a question under my tongue.

Roots pierce my chin, pin my tongue, crack my teeth.

I think I found a worm.

I don't know if open suits me, but it’s too late now.

Last year I swallowed a sunrise,

And it’s still trying to find its place inside me.

Light churns my stomach, beams between ribs.

I can't tell if I'm glowing or burning.

The vending machine flickers. The static is sharp.

I think I finally understand what it’s saying.

A can drops. I don’t remember making a choice.

I wish I didn’t.

- Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Excerpt from II.

There is a difference between pain and love, even if the oxytocin swears they feel the same. Neurotransmitters are fickle and cannot be trusted. Vulnerability cannot be extracted from torn tissues and frayed fibres. Validity isn’t measured in prolene. My worth cannot be tied to the unravelling of my own skin. Not all threads need to be plucked.

- Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Make me slam every door I have left ajar. Suck the ache from my organs. Hold my hands. Dip them in gold. Make blood pacts with me in the backyard. Come to me, tender and teary. Pull my eyes, make them twitch. Plant meaning in the corners of my mouth. Part the sea. Bring me home. Take me out. Let me in. Brush my hair. Dissolve every thought I have had of another. Find God, prove it to me. Bring me flowers. Teach me. Wait for me. Meet my Father. Know me, love me anyway.

- Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

There is sacred geometry etched in your eyes, divinity mirrored only in the moon’s reflection on dark waters. It pools in you. Celestial secrets drip from your fingertips, shards of silver stardust, imbued with ancient wisdom. This is what I crave.

Fervent supplication seeps from my soul. I am wholly devout. Plant nails of sacrifice in my palms and let me rise from the stone. Make me marble. Cold, pious stone, carve me of sainthood, venerate me. Alchemical ritual forge me, both saint and stone. Drain the blood from my veins and let me hemorrhage depravity. Pluck my eyes from their sockets and grant me vision. Guild me in reverence and solidify me in stone. Tether me past, present and future. Temporal and eternal, divine triptych, bound maiden, mother, and crone.

Do not let me rot.

Show me what it is to be both waxing and waning. Teach me to swallow snakes, digest their venom, and pull wisdom from my teeth. Drip arcane secrets to my ears and show me where the duality resides. I ache to find the light in the shadow. Dissolve me and reconfigure my atoms.

Let beatification begin, a divine mantle draped upon me. Let them worship. Devout pilgrimage and prayer to absolve me. Adorn me in offerings, garlands of light and tokens of devotion. Celebrate my sanctity with sacrifice. Monumental embodiment, standing as a singular altar. Give me tradition.

- Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

Questions. Do you know why I am here? It’s been so long. I don’t really know where else I would go. I didn’t think I would be back. I never thought I would be anywhere else.

Visions. So visceral and bright they blur into blinding white light that I cant see past. Disoriented fractals burn my optic nerves. I just want to see. I get migraines from the fluorescents but refuse to turn off the lights. Action potentials surge relentlessly along axons, synaptic clefts overflow with neurotransmitters, yet this anomalous paralysis consumes me.

There is nothing to do here.

Potential. Trickles into my mouth and pools in the back of my throat, choking me, passively. I refuse to swallow it and I will never spit it out. I let it sit there, suspended in stasis, to spite it for ever coming in.

Drowning. I will not be forced to take action. My indolence will probably kill me one day.

Indecision. For as long as I can remember. Inaction is inherent in my structure, motionlessness molecularly encoded. Still I seek it, hiding within it, some kind of Ixodida, idle and greedy. I want all of it but won’t choose any of it. I will sit and wait for the pebbles to grow legs and walk to me.

Divine Intervention. I want it gift wrapped by God, impossibly neat, easy to open, and delivered to my feet. There are so many pathways but I wont choose any of them. I catalyze and supplicate. Anything is better than this stagnancy, but I still I refuse. Sometimes I wonder if I was born without the anatomy made for listening, or perhaps, more accurately, completely lacking a temporal lobe. Or frontal lobe for that matter. Something is missing.

One Day. I will be old, rotten in the Meadow, stagnant and decaying, bugs will burrow and fungi will bloom, finally there will be motion, life will take over and I will be forced to concede. I wonder if I will be content as they gorge? Swallowing tympanic membrane, grey matter and stagnancy.

- Dorothea Blythe

[dreormeadow]

I am tethered by gossamer faith in an unseen deity, only devout when my prayers are answered. Gratitude eludes me, a language I know I should remember, yet my tongue is fluent only in desire—an insatiable hunger for what could be.

I want serendipity. Luminescence. Star-crossed.

I am desperate for ephemeral moments. Soft sunlight filtering through cream cotton sheets, casting warm, golden light, leaving promises of a tangible tomorrow on our skin. Visions of a future steeped in delicate devotion consume me. I am feverish. I see snapshots of laughter spilling sepia over sleepy summer mornings, gentle morning breeze entangled in silk, veiling a balcony that blurs beyond the grasp of my mind. Buttering toast in a kitchen I haven’t lived in yet and walking hand in hand by a river that has not yet dared to ripple our names.

Consume me in tender worship. Show me quintessential romance, hidden in undiscovered connection. Burn constellations into my soul. I want you to find me. Grant me silence, the kind that is only found through divine omniscience. Secrets that I will live and die by. Sacred vows.

This is more than simple desire. I want to find you. I crave cracking the enigma, splitting the skin and coaxing out the soft summer fruit, tasting the very essence of what lies within. Bury me in the labyrinth. Shed the boundaries of flesh and bone. Let me trace the lines of your soul until I could recognise them in the void that exists between celestial galaxies.

- Dorothea Blythe