Cycles

Not even the park
Could offer me refuge
Tonight
From the madness
Lurking beneath calm exterior
As my cortex threatened to explode
Nothing could quieten raging
Words and thoughts…
I felt again the saddest woman
Alive yet dead,
Sitting on a park bench
In the darkness
As raindrops danced around
Is this another cycle

I whispered silently
Even my beloved trees
Seemed lost on a cold
Hard vibe
His dead spirit lurked
Like ghosts I’m yet
To face

I loved you
But I let you go
Is that even rational
Sometimes walking away
Is harder than staying
As I moved from
Naïve girl into
Strong femininity
Heart beats vibrating
Across oceans

As I walked home
Drenched to bone
Fatigue overwhelmed
It seemed I entered
There and then
Another phrase
Womanhood
Screaming out
To be known

Maria Gornell is published in Shoots and Vines all female anthology ‘I Can’t Be Your Virgin and Your Mother’, and Print Issue 1, as well as featured in the online zine Counterexample poetics. The Beat, Debris magazine
Black-listed mag , Lit Up Magazine, Covert poetics, Heroin Love Songs, opium poetry, agua issue 1 Scintillating
Publication, and Liverpool 800 anthology, amongst others.
She lives in Liverpool UK is training in counseling and works in group therapy.