YASMIN ROE – TWO POEMS

Pulse

Bones of your wrist.

Skin beneath my fingers.

Head on your chest.

Lie back,

Feel your blood ripple

Over and around me

Through my fingers

Skimming the tips of bones.

Heat

Passed to me.

Alive with the pulse of tomorrow

And the day after.

 

This morning I held cold hands.

Ice flesh;

A cut of arm;

A kilo of leg;

Tossed and turned over.

Life had trickled out hours before.

When we felt for that same beat

It was no more.

Though we tried we could not keep his pulse

From being released.

 

So I lie inside of you.

Nuzzled,

Into the smell of your pits,

The glaze of your face,

The sweat in the crevice of your back

And feel your pulse synchronise with mine

Knowing that tonight we will both be warm.

 

 

Breathe

Miles of it,

Piled high.

Colossal chaos colliding in my chest.

I like you,

I think,

In that small and meek way you grow to like something.

A song that repeats on you

Over and over.

Can’t get it out of your head.

Twitching from the corner of each mouth.

A longing for wake-up kisses;

Midnight talks in the black;

Carrying each other through rain.

Desire to be yours.

 

It’s a funny sort of madness.

Like a fever that beats

In shallow breaths.

To be comfortable;

To feel secure.

To breathe

To not think

And to breathe again.

 

Yasmin is from Hull and studies Learning Disability Nursing at the University of York.