Author Archives: chloeroselilly

Resentment pooling Babies drooling My last nerve spooling on a finite thread Who am I fooling? It’s not my calling  I’m falling, failing, where is my head   My teeth are grinding  On this ring-tight binding And I keep finding a pinching dread This endless minding I’m forever pining For solitude from whining, an emptyContinue reading “Failing you, my loves”

Am I going mad? Or is it this deepening fog That’s left me just a slice of an unsmudged person Pillars, towers, a fortress of fungi have filled the space between my ears And like a malfunctioning VCR I spit out the same words ad infinitum  ‘No!’ ‘Stop!’ ‘Come here!’ ‘Eat your dinner!’ My teethContinue reading “Sunlight”

We take the last light minutes for ourselves A canoe dipping and skimming across oil slick waters A chorus line of fish leap into the air around us And I wonder if we’ve forgotten the words to this love song It’s eight o clock and there’s a bonfire on the shore mirroring a nectarine skyContinue reading “Bon Anniversaire”

The wind picked up handfuls of leaves and tossed them at us. Coloured piles gathering underneath the peeling white bleachers. Luca ran from flower bush to flower bush, disappearing inside the sprawling mass of pink and bees to return with short snapped lavender and daisies. I trudged up the stairs of the grandstand, walking sidewaysContinue reading “All before 9pm on a Wednesday”

if god is, then god is mother a father may love, but a father doesn’t pull from his own flesh to give muscles and bones a father doesn’t rend himself in two doesn’t watch as a face, a neck, a body emerges from himself see the skin formed from his cells nourished by his bodyContinue reading “Mother”

Crescendo of a thousand hallelujahs  Spanning across the wintergreen fields Yellow tufts and brown cows and the occasional orange excavator Those almond eyes staring out, reflecting in the glass With your red sweater, so dark against your salt-white throat I reached back to grasp your hand And you let me, staring down at your littleContinue reading “Heading Home”

It’s not that I thought it would all be perfect. Hand in hand with you under the morton bay fig. Stepping over roots like the backs of sea monsters pushing up through the wet earth. You pressed me up against the cool bark and ran your hands along the inside of my dress. I didn’tContinue reading “Nettles”

The ocean rushed up under my skirts, softening that line of pink between my skin and the cooling, grey stones. The sun was receding fast, the water still holding some lingering warmth. I pulled off the damp fabric of my dress and checked back to see Luca and his papa feeding veggie chips to aContinue reading “Pasta in Paradise”

The shame that I felt when I found that telltale pink in the seat of my underwear for the first time was overwhelming. I was the first of my friends and didn’t have an ounce of the confidence that was required to traverse that milestone solo. I had spent the previous  six months trying fruitlesslyContinue reading “Half-Woman”

I sit now watching a couple through the split in their yellow-lit curtains, in the dance of domesticity  Ironed tracksuits and morning smiles sunny-side-up All the words unspoken, feelings unfelt, lips unkissed  Didn’t they learn that life is not a Christmas list?     Reality in monochrome; all these grey-cladded whites A hundred whiskered menContinue reading “Ode to the Suburbs (or Never Fucking Happy Pt. 1)”