in parentheses

Rachael Sevitt is a Scottish-Israeli writer and poet. She enjoys romanticising the mundane and hiking by moonlight. Rachael is pursuing an MA in Creative Writing from Bar Ilan University. Her work can be found in Write Haus Magazine and The Basilisk Tree. She lives in Jaffa, Israel, by the sea.

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Wetlands

My hands are bound by a ball of wool
I’ve had in my own back pocket for eleven years.

Wherein some nightly visitor comes around,
rolls me up like a tangled yoyo

throws me against the breakwater
before retracting again to the jagged shore.

In these dreary cycles
of reliving life on a cliff,

I split in two.
One half

rumbles for adhesion
to a place where hard lines soften,

where resistance bends
like cattails and I can be held still

by arms calm enough to grasp, breathe in,
sink into like silk pillows;

while the other keeps its tattered hold
of my nightmare’s brother.

& someone told me once
that love without the rush

will never be enough,
but all I want from love is to dissolve

into a body that won’t smash
or scatter with the whims of thunder.

So I turn my back on repetition
to tread in murkier ground

& breathe out the vigilance
I’ve held dear like an heirloomed ring.

The veins of grime spider their way
through my palms; I rest my hands

on the ground and accept the infection
as I expand in time with the slow tide.

I stab my thigh with a tetanus shot and rip apart my yarn
and smile at its unravelling edges

& before stumbling into the wetlands,
I throw the broken spool

over the cliffside rocks and watch
as the water makes its once-tight loops swell

All your friends like fireflies

All your friends like fireflies
dance in their sparkles, enclosed
in an old jar, buzzing and
writhing, and you are outside,
a wee girl running

a sad finger over its sandy glass.
All your friends
small enough to fit
inside your palm.

You are bigger
than you once were. You can’t get past
the mouth. Your closed hands
too clumsy not to snap
your dear friend Ariella’s
mirrorball wings. Not to crush
Yaakov’s too big chest
to shiny pieces. Perhaps parts
of you dimmed when you got
bigger. You lost your glittering
naivety. Stopped finding fireflies
in neighbours’ eyes.

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