Becoming a Ghost was Easy
When you closed your eyes
I let the communion of silence
dissolve on my sugar-frosted tongue
and circulate through my body.
The creak in my still-growing bones
became the tinny hiss of a radio
and the snap of my fingers
faint voices carried across the town.
When you started to count
I let the sky-coloured shroud
drop from my shoulders to my feet
and waited until you reached ninety –
until the fabric absorbed
the tarmac weeds and hobbled pigeons –
before I began to run and hide
in scrubland behind the supermarket.
Thistles scored my bare legs,
broken glass was the currency of clover
and the rain on newspapers
pulped the passing days.
You never came to seek me out
and when I finally walked home
I found the belongings in my room
had been neatly packed in boxes,
labelled in mother's hand for clearance.
Susan Darlington’s poetry regularly explores the female experience through nature-based symbolism and stories of transformation. It has been published in the UK and US (Fragmented Voices, Algebra Of Owls, Dreams Walking, and Anti-Heroin Chic among others). Her debut collection, Under The Devil's Moon, was published by Penniless Press Publications (2015). Follow her here: @S_sanDarlington.