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Letter

  • Posted on July 17, 2019 at 11:14 pm

Write me a letter I can wait for.
 
Let me find you on the mat
lean you against my teapot
warm your thoughtful words.
 
Send me an envelope to open.
 
Let me slip a blade carefully
in the gap above the tongue
where you licked it closed.
 
Choose a special stamp.
 
First or second is fine, but
so I can spend a moment
on its miniature design.
 
Spread your words over pages.
 
Unfolding them, turning,
uncovering you at leisure,
I will bring you quietly home.
 
We could email, message, text.
 
I could open, read and answer
in a moment in a thought
it could all be said and sudden.
 
But we would be in a crowd.
 
In the clutter of chatter and
comment, appeals, spam – and
I would rush not to lose you.
 
So send me a letter I can wait for.
 
Give me time to expect you,
joy to discover you, patience
with simplicity – and tea.

2018 © Andie Davidson

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Orientation: Portrait

  • Posted on June 7, 2019 at 8:42 pm

I’m sitting in front of the big portrait mirror, watching the incremental improvement in my hair under the expert scissors of my lesbian hairdresser. I can talk comfortably about my partner – and hers – and indeed about being trans. I told her early on, half presuming it was already obvious from my thin hair on top, my characteristic hairline, and to signal that I was OK to be identified. I started coming here on recommendation of my partner, so ‘coming out’ as gay had already been done by proxy, though it was into my first cut that I realised…

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Going Out: Eastern Germany 2017

  • Posted on January 1, 2018 at 1:22 pm

She doesn’t quite catch my hand
it falls—shatters on the ground.

You never quite know.

Windows down the empty way,
nostalgia with suspicion —
a Trabi sits on the lot, a tiny
sufficient reminder
that trust is fragile, still.

I look down at my hand
the pieces silently explain
why I had danced apart last night
to rock, metal and stones, a
wrong fear of anyone too right.

They pointed at us.
They looked disgusted.
You just didn’t see.
At the fruit blossom fest last year,
—and I recall.

The pieces of my hand reluctantly
rearrange themselves, reoccupy
my glove, find my pocket;
join every love darkened by fear
es tut mir leid.

Yes, and knowing
that this is not how change happens.

 

2017 © Andie Davidson

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Basket of Memories

  • Posted on August 10, 2017 at 11:30 pm

There is a series of drawings I should have bookmarked, illustrating grief. One shows two people walking side by side, each holding a handle of a basket marked ‘memories’. The grief version of this image is one person, holding just one handle. Memories are something else when shared, repainted, renewed. Something is forever lost in memories unshared.

And then there is the business of separations, and memories that are denied, memories longed for, memories stirred, and not the same from both sides. This poem began in light of my lost family: chosen and deliberate breaking of memories. And I have seen shared belongings in an unshared space, and wondered about the ways in which I am forgotten.

This poem is a poignant and very real portrayal of losing my family to my personal changes with which they could not cope or embrace. But then I thought about it after writing, and realise that it also applies to my mother’s slow loss of memory (even that I am her daughter), whilst well-remembered things could be found in her house. Things shared, that no longer are; things that could be shared memories, but are not.

The basket of my memories

has a broken handle, many spilled—

I found them arranged on your shelves
hanging in order on your walls

where my eyes are pools
not wells, and dry in the sun
between showers.

There is a mother and there is a daughter
who don’t remember, deliberately—
one doesn’t deliberately remember
the other deliberately doesn’t.

I am a memory in a basket
with no handles
a pool without reflection.

There is a photo of a cat who died—
on your shelf, on your wall.

The recycling basket lies by the door.

 

2017 © Andie Davidson

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Kiss my breath

  • Posted on June 29, 2017 at 10:08 pm

it has entered
left and some is still of me

a little can be you
or may dispelstay free

some is morning
is cloudsat night

stirring of wings
of leavesand flight

open as windows
like my heartand mouth

stirring in curtains
from eastthen south

some is yawning
or laughterand delight

a little lies in stillness
or a skylarkat its height

it has flown
touchedan ancient sea

kiss beginnings
kiss my breathkiss me

 

2017 © Andie Davidson

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