Three Poems by Natalie Crick

For You

This month her depression began.
He obsessed her.
She tied her heart with ribbon like a present,
Licking his fingers and kissing his feet.

Words failed her.
She breathed him in like a terrible secret,
A childless woman beneath the ivory moon.
But what about his eyes, his eyes, his eyes.

Walking in the Winter trees
Were his shadows in the fog.
He was innocent as a lamb.
Sleep, my Angel,

Deaf and dumb
As the drugged summer sun.
My Love,
I want you.



Sleepwalkers in Love

I keep thinking of you,
Making love to you.
She still had those dreams,
Stricken with night tremors
Like a child shaking in nightmare.

He did not come home last night.
Where were you?
He would go off into the woods,
Melting away into the black dark.
But, promise me, you cannot tell anyone else.

A friend of her died only yesterday.
She was so emotional with every breath.
Her thoughts lurched around inside her skull.
Oh Christ!  It is her again,
Drowning in the fields outside her window.

She was chalk white as a ghost girl.
A pale moth stared down from the roof
like an enormous bird
Risen from the dead.
Where did you go last night?

Insomniac.  The moth had the face of her husband.
They woke in a forest of black pine,
Naked as beautiful animals,
Waking in a daze as if it were years later,
All of the villagers old and grey and gone.

She was blank-brained as a doll or some birthday gift.
He would guard her like his heart.
They were in love.
But, you know what lies can do.
She turned to him in his sleep.



Fever Floats

Throw it away,
Syrup to somersaults.
Nothing has changed.  Night hangs
So low my eyes sing:
Tell me what you see in it.

I am a gift
Of teeth and blood and hair.
And now, crawling
Through shit,
I am begging you.

We could trick the tightrope,
And be swallowed whole,
Letting the stars mold and peel,
Or lick the cylinders, tears fall white.
The final act.

Natalie Crick has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl.  Her poetry is influenced by melancholic confessional Women's poetry.  Her poetry has been published in a range of journals and magazines including Cannons Mouth, Cyphers, Ariadne's Thread, Carillon and National Poetry Anthology 2013.