Brakes

I could outrun them, if I were fast enough.

They're so fast that unless I really run
they catch up with me
the moment I turn the corner, and pile back on

(this one with the claws in my shoulder is what I feel is expected of me, and
this too-tight-hug of massive arms around my chest is my asthma, and
this little guy with the suckers attaches itself to the roof of my mouth and whispers the names of the people I've had to leave behind, and)

But

if I were fast enough

I could outrun them, and I know I could because
I can outrun my wheezing lungs for fifty metres of air-light sprinting
leave my problems and my frustrations and my breathlessness for dust
just muscle on the pavement and the wind in my streaming eyes

my tiredness catches me first, but I know that she's the fastest and she's not so heavy
and it's round the corner, she and I in the lead but the pack is closing, and still I know
my depression's still finding his legs and
my fear hasn't even gotten started

Bam Bam Bam
feet slamming into concrete
juddering my lungs into submission, and here comes the front-runner in the trailing pack,
asthma
slamming into me hard and pulling me back
and then I have to slow down
to take a breath
and stop

and they all catch me and it feels like I've tripped the way you used to when you were a child, where you catch one foot with the other and go down in a spinning tangle of ungainly limbs.
They pile back on.
Hey guys.

And I know
it's a stupid thing to sprint
I know
it's a stupid thing to dance every dance until the small hours of the morning
I know
it's a stupid thing to sing every song along with the radio until my voice comes out as a
squeak

But I do it anyway
even though I can't be fast enough
because when I pace myself
they never lose their grip

Tree rings

Underneath his skin, there lives a younger man.

He knows she sees him sometimes

in the edge of his smile when he sees a certain production

which is not a play to him, but three glorious months of hell

of forgotten lines and secret kisses and never enough sleep

until he finally plucked up enough courage at exactly the wrong moment

to suggest the banality of coffee and a chat

in the bounce of a curl descending from the pristine plowed field

of his moon-and-stars hair, a coil of twilight grey

that transforms his face, wiping out wrinkle and fatigue, echoing

the midnight coil that fell from the same place on that pale afternoon

he met her

in the bunching of his muscles as he lifts his daughter

(so heavy now, he used to marvel at the lightness of this masterpiece

that sits solidly in his arms, becoming more and more her own)

and they remember- we used to row and climb and box

where now we only lift and curl and lift and curl again

in the slight, ever-so-slight, widening of his eyes

when he picks up a complex kit that promises

it will take at least a full day, even now, to put together a perfect scale model

of a jet or tank or battleship, and he can almost smell the glue

frustation and achievement and lost skin from youthful fingers

Underneath his skin, there live a thousand younger men,

concentric men that never fade away

that only grow distant

and are never quite gone.

Beast

Fairies are not to be trusted. 

We are told as children that we should not listen to the fairies, should not look at them, should not enter their rings, should not taste fairy food or drink fairy wine. Every child makes mistakes, of course. Most are lucky, and are simply ensorcelled or bewildered for a couple of days, and learn their lesson. The older a child is when they finally make a mistake, the harsher the penalties the fairies exact upon them. I made my only mistake upon my twenty-first birthday, and for that I am now locked in two cages. My newest cage is made from white elm, carved with a cold iron dagger and secured with a silver lock. My oldest is this body. My hands are black-furred paws, my mouth a muzzle of granite teeth. I can see- I can always see- the points of my oaken horns. Could I speak, I would tell two things. I would tell that fairies are not to be trusted, and I would tell the townsfolk that they have imprisoned the wrong beast.