CW: eating disorders
The cliffs are two arms that wrap the waves up in a safe embrace
and the evenings are the calmest shade of blue.
You can stand at the edge of the world here,
utterly alone before a blank horizon, fingers lifted to the sky,
with an understanding: anything could happen.
On the way down to the cove is a bench to commemorate a couple
called Ernie and Irene and you wonder what kind of magic it would be
to meet someone who had your name in a different order,
who reflected your parts without competing, who understood every letter of you.
Maybe here, you could even start believing in real life love again
and alone in the holiday bedroom, you spill out 22000 words
of a fleeting holiday romance, not for you, but for someone at least.
Still, when you stop to reconsider, you look at the letters of your name
and realise you can’t make anything without losing parts, without making a mess,
but in the end, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because your love is bound up
in the band round your wrist: you tap it, lovingly, to see the count.
You walk the shore instead of sitting in the blue – you have new ways of finding balance now.
It doesn’t matter because you’re never alone anyway.
You’ve got the whispers and the words in your head and you hold them close,
let them eat at your heart muscles as you count up sweet potato with your eye,
measure a sandwich with your hand or calculate the menu before ordering,
as you let the voices stroke your cold cheeks when you do as you’re told.
You see the beauty of the place and you cling to the sublimity
but you’ll look back at the photographs only to consider the size of your thighs and arms.
You sit on the shore and look out to where the arms of the land can’t quite reach round
to contain the ocean and you’ll wonder if you can ever go back.