janeylfoster

[janeylfoster]

Monochromes

She faced herself in the mirror and asked. ‘Will you let me wear this black and white skirt, will you let me feel its coolness round my ankles?’ And she smiled. She asked again. ‘Will you let me wear my white cotton blouse, the one with Pre-Raphaelite sleeves and if you let me wear it, will you let me walk by the canal?’ ‘Will you let me use my small feet to make imprints in the warm…

[janeylfoster]

Mrs. Kelly - Room 253

Her thoughts moved to hands. She saw them cutting stems and tying, and tying turned into fingertips around the silk of cravats and fiddling with tie pins and buttons. But she couldn’t stay there long, lying, looking at her nails, gloss mirroring the sky. She observed her nails, now ruby, resonating with the velvet from her day. And more hands came, tousled up and pinned her hair while at her…

[janeylfoster]

White Horses - Recurrence Relation

She supposed it was time to run across the beach again and she was right. She moved across in juddering frames in temperament with the kitchen chair, her clothes arranged, red top, black waistcoat and Mary Janes. The sand flies out, a response to her presence as the restaurant table slides in. White ceramic bowl of chicken salad and she runs. Feet shoving sediment, the bench in Brueton park and…

[janeylfoster]

Colme, 1962

I wonder if it was now at 09:24 or later when the pulsing stopped. I don’t know the time but I know she cradled his heavy head in her arms. Arms I didn’t know back then, back then when I wasn’t alive. But I came to know her arms and we linked them, mine with hers, in the biting bluster of the moors.  And his heavy head in the chilled March light nestled in her warmth, a warmth he could rely on.…

[janeylfoster]

Lake Water Lapping

It doesn’t matter that the sun has slipped behind my view for a while or that the amber hyacinth glass has lost its bright light. And then returns, irrepressible as though it never went away. How could it, how could the life force that keeps me here, have disappeared? The taste of my fingernails, just for a second and the bole of my May tree is hidden by the cacophony of daffs, just look at…

[janeylfoster]

Six-Cornered-Starlet

It’s early, from my window I can tell it snowed over night. I have no curtains up now, nothing to block out the sun when it comes.  Outside there are fresh ice crystals, six cornered stars and a thick layer that coats the streets, that demands to be looked at but not right now. Underneath it, is the névé from a four year storm. Some of it has melted and reformed but it lies there, foundational,…

[janeylfoster]

Womb Shaped

If you study the shellac on your nails and lose yourself in its luminous magical lights, in the rainbow shot silver sparkle, it will take you back.  Take you back to just before, in the hours, in the safety, in the warmth before the sense of separation came. And there in the shimmerings is your father, walking home in the dark, your mother in the care of the midwives and the waiting. And he…

[janeylfoster]

Gifts

All I really need is the approaching night turning to undried ink in my rain. I need the splinters of headlights, tail lights dancing in the puddles and nestling down in red fleece I’ll rush. I won’t be long.  And I’m not.  And next door to the pharmacy I blur around under fluorescence for a while, conscious of my pocket once again. It rubs up against my thigh, reminding me and later all I…

[janeylfoster]

Lemon & Honey Song

In my warm mug of hot lemon and honey, the specks of cinnamon and cayenne pepper float about, they collide with the chunk of ginger and bounce off to the sides. I watch them try to make sense of the swirling forces, giving themselves up to the motion and the heat.  I think about the woman I brushed past at the hospital, the hug I couldn’t give her despite her need and my mind spins to the other…

[janeylfoster]

Bamboo - 3rd

I made my bed yesterday. I’ll make it again today. I’ll fold the weight of white bamboo sheets across the bottom of the bed and smooth it out. I need to smooth things out. And I wonder about the woman who’s preparing for the service on Tuesday. I’ve decided it’s a woman, though it might be a man, might be both, might be many I suppose. But for my purpose, she’s a woman and I imagine she makes…

[janeylfoster]

Breathe - November

Beetle in a box Box on an island Island in the ocean Ocean at my core

[janeylfoster]

Time Dilation #5

I suppose it was me and the clock, me and the concerned faces, me breathing and counting and getting nowhere. I suppose I don’t like being told that I can’t do something, so I try even harder for a while. A sense that to give up would be to fail. Now I can feel it’s me talking from exhaustion (much like this morning, in this world now.) A sense of the pressure I put on myself, but then as now,…

[janeylfoster]

Time Dilation #4

I seem stuck, a little laden down, a little numb. And while today’s radiator warms my back to the sound of clocks and snoring, my younger hands lose their grip and tea comes tumbling, scalding, soaking into their hospital robe and I crumple. Soon, cursor flashing, clock ticking. Tomorrow, younger, stronger. Still stuck. Worried the words will find me in a heap on their sterile floor but I keep…

[janeylfoster]

Time Dilation #3

This familiarity in sitting, waiting, a sense that I can’t give up. And if it were a Saturday I’d have cried at the woman between my legs, at her optimism for the day but not later. Later, no change and I sank back into the endless bed. Her trundled trolley of glinting things tidied away hope and wheeled it out the door. Only the armchair held me, knew me, when I called out for help. I do wonder…

[janeylfoster]

Time Dilation #2

Wait for it to focus, wait and then there she is, the woman between my legs. I see her face, her reassuring smile. My voice fractures into a thousand shards, little spinning me, little jagged me. Here a glimpse, there a glimpse, fingers inching closer. I keep an eye on the table to the right, watch the line where the wall meets the ceiling. I don’t trust them, don’t trust lines but then again,…

[janeylfoster]

Time Dilation #1

Morning started in the thin pink ethnic t-shirt that took me under the tree I’ll pass by later. I’m sure the bole of it remembers me, it showed me how to bend into the nature. I said I’d do whatever it takes and I did. Now I come to think of it, it was the pale green embroidered t-shirt, did I change in the morning, now not sure? Either way trees came and went. They wheeled me inside. Later.…

[janeylfoster]

Power Pack

You know when you can hear your mother inside you saying that you have to rest? But you know and she knows that you can’t, not now. Well, not just yet. And your mother’s face is around you with that look, that understanding that you can’t stop. And she swallows hard, keeps it all in, and like her, you do just the same. And she sits alongside you in the silent dawning kitchen, she makes the tea…