TIGER LILIES
She moves the vase out of direct sunlight
and onto a hand-me-down wooden table
that’s greyly filmed in spider-webbed dust,
the slender necks of the flowers craning
towards the hopeful blue rectangle of sky.
He said he’d bought her tiger lilies
because they reminded him of her sunset hair.
But by the time the last of the faded petals falls
and the water has turned stagnant green
she knows that she won’t see him again.
HER (PART II)
It’s just a parlour game
we play on rainy afternoons,
razoring lines down our arms
until red criss-crosses white.
She always wins.
She always regrets it.
Rubbing India ink into scars
that transforms her flesh
into a field of rabbits,
foxes and brooding crows
that undulate when she flexes
and releases her biceps:
a menagerie that slowly fades
until the next time we play.
About the Author:
Susan Darlington is a freelance arts journalist and poet. Her debut collection, Under The Devil’s Moon, is available now through Penniless Press Publications.
