BETH DAVIES – TWO POEMS

BOUYANT

 

You spend more time

imagining yourself driftwood

than mermaid. While others swim,

you curl foetal, pretend

 

you don’t need air.

If you float long enough,

the ocean might erode

your rough edges, polish

 

your bones pebble-smooth.

You are not strong, never sure

when to take a breath, but you know

the air in your lungs is enough

 

to keep you afloat. You could drift

until the world washes away

and you cannot hear the teacher

telling you to resurface.

 

On Realising Home is More than One Place

 

Talking to my parents, I bite back habit

and call it ‘college’. I can’t explain how definitions

expand, how even my own name

 

keeps redefining itself, how my heart

is a dog-eared dictionary, constantly being revised.

Home (noun) will always mean

 

my steel-blooded seven-hilled city,

the house I’ve known longer than myself.

But that’s only the first entry.

 

In the glow of late-night laughter,

I wonder why no one told me

my ribcage could hold two cities.

 

Beth is from Sheffield and currently studies Philosophy in Durham.