Love is a Ouija board for the lost souls and the damned — I will not surrender my planchette if it means giving control to the ghosts. I contain within me a cemetery with anonymous tombstone and nameless crypts. I thought mausoleums were meant to be quiet & this one is as loud as a burlesque hall.
You are a ghost & I cannot commit to a life of haunting.
Seances never felt like homecomings but I gave you my last dance – those nights always scented of clove cigarettes and nostalgia heavy like cologne –
I remember watching the moon cut through trees and thought myself a spirit drifting in & out of your life.
I’m writing absences where your heart used to lie, lacunae where stars used to soar. You were my sanctuary, & I thought I believed in forever.
None of this is broken, but sometimes, parts of me fracture.
Every time I try to write, memories of who I was or who I could be resurrect like Lazarus from a tomb.
My skin is barely hanging on my body & I have grown frail. My desires are no longer carnal, and my rage no longer violent. (She told me the years would soften me like overripe fruit, and I denied it like my hard edges have an advantage.)
Now, here we are at the gates and Peter interrogates me — he asks me why I harbored so much hate, but even if I have forgiven, I couldn’t be lace and be defined by my empty spaces.
I feel like I’ve ruptured, and a part of me will never be the same. I’ve said it before, so maybe I’ll say it again, a fabulist isn’t always a liar — sometimes, just a storyteller.
I followed this line until it fractured and you taught me about the fault lines I never grew up along. He asked me if I still smell like autumn, and people clamored to say hazelnut coffee or brittle fall leaves. I never knew who I was, only what others saw.
I couldn’t be lace. I read through the doctor’s notes and they all diagnosed me the same –
a tired cliché.
This isn’t Plath nor will it ever be, but the most I can ever ask for is someone to love me as I am, to take me into their arms, and not to simply tolerate – not to merely accept – but to cherish, to celebrate, to worship, & to love.
You gathered all these different parts of me, all the different eras, and you saw who I was reflected through each, and you swore you’d stay (as long as I didn’t push too hard).
I’ve been pushing people away for centuries now, and I’m tired.
This certainly isn’t the poem I started, but now that you see me clearly, tell me – will you be the one to run?
A flame was never meant to extinguish this abruptly. Starved of oxygen, your origami letters became ash in a mouth that bled (for too many years). I would say goodbye, but the word is a branding iron razed against a smoldering tongue.
Forgiveness never came easily for the dead. Graveyards are full of grudges and barely concealed debts. When I told you that I loved you, I disguised the words (behind shattered glass bottles and origami letters confettied like New Year’s).
I remember your eyes cold like marbles, frozen like winter ponds. (I made a half-joke and thought myself funny, but your lips never curled up in a smile.) This is autobiography, but all you ever asked for was a poem or a story (but not this – not an obituary or an elegy. Not a eulogy or a goodbye).
I could never say goodbye. I ran from endings & ripped the last page out of every book I ever read.
Sometimes, I even wrote stories that ended in the middle of a —
Eryn lives in South Germany with their family but is originally from Oxford, UK. They work freelance as a translator and a teacher. When not writing, they’re out on their bike in the forest or dreaming up new ideas to write about. They are obsessed with vinyl, fountain pen ink, dragons and cheese. Preferably not all together. Their current favourite thing is spring blossoms against the white clouds. They are working on two new poetry collections which will be released this year, Masquerade Me and Death by Sugar, and two fiction works, a Dystopian Scifi novella called The Dust Collector and a Gothic Horror called The Black Cat Bookshop.
As a huge fan of your book, which features illuminating poetry on PTSD, I feel like I have to address that. How did you overcome your initial fears and write about a topic that is still so taboo in so many places?
I didn’t want to write something hard, or dark, and I really didn’t want to write a poetry collection that is largely autobiographical. But I found that on occasion when I shared an individual poem, that people really resonated with it. I saw that there’s a lot of poetry about anxiety and depression, but hardly anything for PTSD. And ultimately, sometimes, it is on you to begin it. It was on me to say, this is what PTSD looks like. So it became a collection. It was, and I think will remain, the most difficult collection for me to complete and publish. But I don’t regret it.
Do you sit down with a poetry idea in mind or does it slowly develop as you sit in front of the page or monitor? In other words, what is your process?
I should probably mention that I am an aphant, which means that I have no visual landscape. I cannot conjure a memory and play it back as if it is in glorious technicolour. If someone asks me to imagine a box, I cannot see the colour or texture. I see a nondescript box. So when it comes to poetry, you could say that I am a blind poet.
My visual landscape is layered with music notes and quantum physics. I hear a concept of a poem, a shiver of something, and I have to follow it through to the end. It happens a lot with a phrase, an overhead conversation, perhaps, and then I have to chase the thread to the end. I do not always know where it will turn up.
It’s cliché, but each person’s answer is uniquely their own: what is the best writing advice you have received?
Don’t lose your own poetic voice.
What are three words you would use to describe your poetry?
Lyrical Layered Whimsical
Why do you write poetry?
I have been writing poetry since I was 16, and really, have never stopped. I never intended to make something from it, I never intended to call myself a poet. I studied both poetry and playwriting at University but poetry was the one that survived the grind of assignments, of life getting in the way, and it kept coming back. I write poetry because I need to write it. It is cathartic, somehow.
Is there a common motif in your writing that you find yourself returning to?
There are a few, yes.
In Of Swans and Stars I explored the ideas of my own North Star, that place that calls you home, the direction on the compass that we follow. So swans and stars, are very important to me, and you see amber, being cast in amber, featuring often. I write a lot about Druidry, mythology and folklore. Dragons will always be in my poetry. But at the heart of it all, is always love. Love for who we are, for where we have been, and where we are going.
If you could attend a poetry writing conference taught by any author, lyricist, poet, etc., living or dead, which two to three people would you choose and why?
Larkin. I love him, I love how he writes, his raw energy. Peter Gabriel. His wordsmithery is without equal. WH Auden. I want to hear him read and see how it is reflected in his eyes. I want to see how he writes.
A thousand cranes Paper art flying For peace in the world A thousand cranes Countless painstaking Paper folds For peace in the heart A thousand cranes Flying their dance On white string For peace in the eyes A thousand cranes Quiet time Each repetition A healing caress For peace in the soul A thousand cranes Origami sorcery Peace in the world Starts with ourselves.
This weekend, I’m interviewing author and poet ML Stevens. She is extremely talented and kind. When I told her it was my birthday, she gave me an autographed copy of her poetry book “Caged Heart”.
When she’s not writing, or listening to the characters that live in her head rent free, ML Stevens can be caught with her nose in a book or running when the weather permits it. She wrote her first “novel” at a young age after looking out her window one summer day and deciding it would be cool to write a book. Since then she hasn’t been able to put the pen down. She has many more projects planned, including (hopefully) more poetry to come.
Why do you like writing poetry, and how is it different from writing fiction?
It’s where I go to when I need to get something out then and there without writing a novel. Often times, it’s where I go when I’m upset about something that has been weighing on me. Secondly, it flows easily. It’s never hard for me to know what to write into a poem.
Poetry for me is easier than writing fiction. I can whip out a poem anytime and anywhere while with fiction, I can come up with an idea like that, but it takes a lot more time and work to get it written on paper.
Where is your ideal writing space?
I have always felt weird about this question because I don’t have one ideal writing space. I enjoy writing in a coffee shop or at my desk just as much as I enjoy writing on my couch or even outside.
If you ever were to hold a poetry reading, where would you hold one?
I never have held a poetry reading but would love to do one in a cozy library like the library rat I am.
What is your biggest inspiration?
I think for poetry my biggest inspiration is life. the ups and downs of it as well as the people who are part of it. Life itself is artwork, much like poetry, and and there’s so much that I draw from it when I’m writing a poem.
Specific scenarios of hate, anger, sadness, happiness, love, friendship – even nature and all it has to offer can be found in my poetry.
What’s your favorite thing about writing poetry? Your least favorite?
My favorite thing is how quick it is for me. It’s something I can turn to when I’m in a meeting and struggling to stay awake. It looks like I’m taking notes. It’s also there when I want to write something but I am not sure if I want to start a novel or a short story.
If I had to pick a least favorite part about writing poetry, for me personally, it would be how damn personal it comes out ninety percent of the time. It’s a little more difficult for me to write a poem that isn’t personal in at least some way.
When did you begin writing? How has your poetry evolved since then?
In general, I have been writing since I was eight. I didn’t writing poetry until I was twelve or thirteen. In fact, I had never even read a lot of poetry until my middle school Creative Writing teacher made an assignment for us to write thirty different types of poems. I enjoyed writing poetry after that.
My poetry then was simplistic and not as deeply personal as it is now. As I continued to write poetry, it became more complex for me and much more personal. Many of my poems are based on my own experiences and emotions.
What’s your favorite word? Least favorite?
I can’t say I have a favorite word, but I am fond of the words scintillating and surreptitiously. I really don’t know why. For my least favorite words, I have a few that make me cringe. Gyrating is one of them.
Something long gone That can’t be recovered A broken world Filled with greed A shattered soul The pieces scattered A dreadful tempest Roars inside A tender heart That barely beats A soft voice whispers,
Isabelle Palerma 