16th February 2026

 

fumbling with clay

after a forty-year break

lumpy demons

© Rachel Green February 2026

After Duffy, After Radstone

Next to my own skin, her scent,

resting against my lips, my fingers

where they ran across her skin

and pressed the soft, pale flesh around her throat.

All day long, I think of her cocooned

with her yellow room as sunshine

guilds the shutters of her nightly trysts

with Death and yet survives to greet

another dawn with beauty and with grace.

Today will see creation of a masterpiece

for by her hand she moulds both light and dark

and weaves another instance of mortality

to give the world a taste of what it is to slip

with naked flesh between the sheets of agony.

and ecstasy; that mausoleum shroud

of cotton where the blessed pearls still sleep.

© Rachel Green February 2026