Poem: Jay Feathers

This is a weird'un. This poem is linked very closely to both the most recent one posted, and to the another few which are scheduled; they're all about the same person, almost documenting the course of a few months in a way that... Brings an energy I don't love. But they're also some of the best poems I've ever written, especially this one. It went through more drafts, and was shared with more people, than any poem I'd done before (and tbh since), and, annoyingly given later context, is still pretty much hailed as the best I've ever written.

So. Weird energy. But also, they're my feelings and my words and my great poem, so like, f*ck 'em.

Date is hard to pin down because unlike most of my poems, there's no single document conveniently dated with the finished product; there were a lot of drafts in a notebook and in DMs to poetry friends scattered across apps over the course of a few weeks. So I'm dating it 16th January, 2020, as this was the date I performed it at HOWL open mic in Swansea.

Jay Feathers:

I don't believe people can be made for each other;

I used to, but there's a lot of things

I used to believe and don't anymore.

I used to believe that I was easy to fall in love with

but hard to love, the same way I used to believe

stars are just suns who need too much personal space.

I used to believe I could never be drawn to someone

without blistering them when I came too close.

It's not that I think we were made for each other -

it's just that when you kiss me, it feels like all the stars

in my hollow chest finally remembered the sky they came from.

You ask me if I am a dreamer, your voice hungry

for what I brought back, fingertips dancing feather-light

across flickering eyelids. I draw back, hands

clutched tight, so certain it was ugly that I stutter

over my warning to stay back as you reach

for my shaking hands with yours. I do not want

to vomit my trauma onto your bedsheets

when you have trauma enough of your own already.

So when you coax them open, and all

that falls from my fingertips are the bright orange feathers

of a jay, I have your lips on mine, hungry and wondrous,

before they've finished settling around us;

I know you'll keep them, weave them into a cloak;

I want those dreams to keep you warm from your own night terrors.

 

You tell me you have never liked your own name

until you heard it gasped from my lips,

and I remember that your name was the first one I ever

called myself, the first time I ever called myself

a boy. I hold it between my teeth, test my tongue

around the edges, always knowing it was never right for me

but always drawn back to the sound. For the first time,

it feels right to hear; maybe you can love your name

because I formed my lips to speak my own, and they chose yours.

 

You point out that our bodies fit together perfectly,

and I want to tell you that my freckles are just

the sparks from where the stars in your eyes landed.

You ghost your fingers across them, lips tracing, teeth dragging,

and I am reminded of feathers falling from the sky

to settle a cloak across my shoulders. I want to close your eyes

and run the gentlest thumb across your eyelids,

to wonder what stars flicker and burn there;

I press the skin of my chest to the skin of your back,

hoping the galaxies in your chest can feel the galaxies in mine,

can remember the sky they came from, like I learned

to find home in my own empty heart, like I learned

jays nest only in the most solid oaks; sometimes,

you have to know the ground you are rooted in

before his feathers will fall from your fingertips.

I do believe that peace only comes from accepting that

the gaping hole in your chest will never be filled,

but can be painted by the light of sunsets.

I do believe that every breath is a miracle

of holding myself together on all the nights I learned

no-one else would ever love me like I had to love myself.

And I do believe that stars are just the sparks

of a bonfire rising into a black night's sky.

That your night-sky eyes looked into my bonfire heart,

and you aren't afraid of being burned.

That jays can be bright orange, even when the

textbook calls them brown. I don't know

everything I believe in, but for the first time

in a long time, I want to learn with you.