Nostalgia 

 

Looking down at my hands as I turned my duvet cover inside out, I noticed the subtle blue of my veins and how faint the colour was. Why had I never noticed how beautifully delicate the blue of veins are? 

As swiftly as the thought entered and passed, another followed as if my mind was some sort of vessel or stream. 

 

Each thought a delicate feather landing on the water of my mind before sinking back into the Abyss of where it was born. 

The oddest sensation came over me, an amalgamation of memory, nostalgia and melancholy. As I held the corners of the duvet cover and flicked it into the air, I saw myself. At 8 years old, opposite me holding the other two corners and smiling with sweet innocence. 

 

 

I remembered how I used to do this with my mother, as we folded the bedsheets after a laundry wash. “You hold those two ends, I hold these”… 

We would flap our arms to shake it out and then fold the sheet down the middle by walking towards each other. A sweep of sadness washed over me as I realised this memory had been lost for a long time and 

it’s sweetness had faded. 

 

And as I stood there, with the ghost of my childhood self staring back at me, I realised I was standing in my mothers place.  Looking at that porcelain-skinned young girl as if I was the mother of her. 

And I guess I am. We all are as we grow older; the parent of our younger selves.

 

- Niah McGiff 2020

 

The Dreams of Children - 

 

Among violet shadows,

the moon continued to cradle - 

each tale the stars spoke 

lapped around her,

encasing her body

in peach-lipped flames.

 

Below, the green and blue

of earth and water

glowed luminescent - 

a patchwork orb, 

more beautiful 

than the unnamed flowers 

that bloom

in the dreams of children.

 

The murmur of voices - 

a man and woman,

drifted through the trees.

Their whispers 

did not catch on the branches,

nor were they absorbed 

by the trunks.

 

Yet they pierced 

so callously through the air

and into her skull.

Still,

she could not give meaning

to the words

of their bitter voices.

 

As she waded

through the thick

and lacteous marshes 

of their minds,

she felt parts of her soul

dropping in fragments,

into the turbid water -

like candle wax dripping on silk.

- Niah McGiff 2020

 

 

 

Do You Remember -

 

They arrived

on the backs of sleepy whispers,

thick as chloroform,

soft-footed and silk-lunged,

pressing their breath

into the lockjaw seams of our walls.

 

Broke down doors and,

felt the blistened blackening of the sky

like ink spilled in milk.

The blinking lights of the city
became dampended and smothered
by the sunken grey of their shadows.

I watched.

All I could do was watch.

 

While we froze
in the arctic of our fragile dreams,
through the sea of desks,
we were left to hang
in the space they left inside us.

 

- Niah McGiff 2020

 

When Its Quiet -

 

There’s a loudness to the whispers I hear,

whispers shouldn’t be loud, should they?

they bloom through the brick-thick hush

of my marrow’s rooms,

pressing their oil-slick lips to my ribs.

 

They steep the silence until it sours,

a broth of bitten tongues.

 

A pool of strangled murmurs

simmers beneath my sternum,

boiling slow,

scraping silver spoons against the lining

of my hollowed gut.

 

They crawl.

They crawl up my spine,

a procession of spindled fingers,

nailbeds soft as bruised fruit,

scratching hymns into bone.

 

They stir in my blood,

thin-boned, clever things,

brushing feathers against cartilage,

giggling in the meat of my ear.

 

Born to tease, to nest,

they feed on silence,

fattening behind my face

until the skin thickens,

a mask of wax and waiting.

 

Time grinds its teeth.

The clock ticks only in mimicry -

a stutter, a smirk.

 

I am slowed by them,

their metallic shrills,

as if the hours have wrists,

tightening,

mocking my quiet with theirs.

- Niah McGiff 2020