Two Poems by Sarah Flint

Split

You took a hammer

and a wedge made of
polished black oak
you had made earlier
but kept hidden from me
and struck the hammer
against the wedge
as it rested on my head.
It split my skull
and its point
sunk down into my belly
where it bled 3 am thoughts
into my carefully preserved veins.
It seeped guilt and doubt
that curdled with my righteous indignation
until it became a strangulated hernia
of right and wrong.
You blinked
and walked away.

Absence and Loss

It hung there

Invisible but palpable,
The bit missing.

The absence of a warm touch,

A glance, a thought spun out
And captured in our hands.

My thought. Your thought.

An imperceptible similarity
That knitted and knotted us together.

Now the thread hangs and swings

Empty, weightless and cold in the sea breeze.
The absence of your presence is like

Peter Pan’s cut off shadow against the cliff

But I need it sown back on
Like I need a hole in the head.



Sarah Flint has been trying to put words into good order for a while. She plays with poetry and flash fiction in the UK and is a regular contributor to various sites on the Web.