Mine is a journey through the pages of night,
Ink stained and dusty under a blue-black sky,
Moving forward while reason sleeps.
Child of the dark, bride of these times,
Married to a cause I no longer remember,
Widowed by a love I left behind.
The world tore when I was born. Crying and naked
I crawled through to clothe myself in others' faces,
Tangible dreams that wrap and wind,
Clinging and choking like an overgrown garden,
Seeding their hopes and fears upon me,
Imprinting their stories in the holes in my mind.
The pages turn and I am another,
Not quite me and not quite not.
Faces and bodies melt to reform repetitively.
The enforced sympathy drags me down.
There is no silence at the centre of this whirlwind,
Filled with the dryness of pages frantically turning.
It is a dead sun which illuminates my nightly voyage,
Leading my own dance of selves along this dusty route.
I have dreamed of a cool white tower under a cobalt sky
Where even the damned may receive absolution
And the pain of being can be erased
By the single stroke of an inkless pen.
I have come so far, but not far enough it seems
To make the telling of many conform to the simplicity of one.
A single watcher in the one tall tower,
A lonely multitude on the way to nowhere.
Ours is a tale no better for the telling;
A story with no end that was best not begun.
Shapechanger by J.S. Watts | Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser
J.S.Watts is a British poet and novelist who weaves the fantastical and the literary with other vibrant strands to create glowing, multi-faceted writing. Her poetry, short stories and non-fiction appear in diverse publications in Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and America and have been broadcast on BBC and independent radio. Her published books include: Cats and Other Myths, Songs of Steelyard Sue, Years Ago You Coloured Me, Underword and The Submerged Sea (poetry) and A Darker Moon, Witchlight, Old Light and Elderlight (novels). For more information, see her website https://www.jswatts.co.uk/
