To you, my love
I leave the second best beds

The worlds dragged up dregs and drowned regrets
Lakes that have bled their dappled beauty are long dead and dread

So that every time you place a foot
The thought that the ground could come loose
Parades through your head

I’ll leave your lungs and loves unfed
Your green spaces stained red
I’ll leave

Taking with me all I’ve found and instead
You can have whatever’s left

To you I hand down a horizon
Marked by my mistakes

Fires, fakes

Days comprising a season-less haze
And a lifetime’s fight for intangible change
A place void of brightness

Not the world I knew
But a charcoal likeness
And a tightness in your frail chest
So that, at best?
You’ll get to see your twenties through

And I would give you
The sky if I could
But it’s too scored and scorched from long haul holidays

So for my youngest i leave an apology
That you will never let the citrus lick of dew stain your fingers
Nor the smell that lingers after the rain
Frame your autumn days

I’m sorry
For the still nights
When you won’t be looking up at stars
Charting those stories that should have been ours;

The powerless pyre in the pit of your being
For bequeathing that feeling
I can only apologise

‘Cos I chose to turn the other cheek
Turn my back
Keep my eyes firmly closed…

As if I didn’t know
That this world is not a temporary home
It’s not on loan
It’s not due back as soon as I am gone

We might just be passing through
What are we passing on?

Ellen Renton