Editor’s note: In these five poems, memory, love, work and violence are caught in images that stay with us: a dolphin breaking the water, hands scrubbed raw, a pair of red shoes beside a chalk outline. Swatie writes of people who leave but continue to live in the stories we tell, and of a city that keeps asking us to prove our worth. Tender in one moment and unsettling in the next, the poems reveal how absence changes what we remember and what we choose to see.

I like telling your stories:

No, not stories about you but

your stories. I tell them

as if they were mine.

I tell them with flair,

the consequence of a fair

imagination. I ensure there

is an audience and then

your stories ensue. 

I narrate the one about the pond

and the green grass. The one

where we kayaked and I fell. No, 

you fell, but 

in my stories, we are the same person.

I recount the one in the darkness, 

in which ghosts and hauntings came true.

The one with the bats, 

the one with the tents in Jordan, 

the one where I flew.

You live in my stories.

They are mine now, not yours.

The odd price for not knowing

where you live anymore

is that you live in my stories.

 

We go looking for dolphins

in the depths of the green sea.

The ocean with its calm yet stormy depths hides these wonders.

The waves in the boat ride 

make me nervous. I giggle part afraid 

of falling, part afraid you'll think

I'm not a child of the water.

You, excited like as an eel

that belongs, give me a smile. 

The dolphins look like you:

happy swimming in that great ocean 

and showing their face to the sun. 

The dolphin-you and the dolphins in the sea,

together in one place. 

I try to click this picture with words.

The rocks on our way back have been there

since it all began. 

Dark, sombre, standing. 

They have been witnessing the dolphins, 

and the gulls and the eagles, quietly.

Maybe, I'm not like you, 

a dolphin. 

Maybe, I'm like the rock. 

I’m the rock meant to witness you.

 

If only you published more

If only you published well

If only you had a PhD

If only you networked, and people knew you

If only you put your belief

your dignity

your hard work

your creativity 

on the line for your job. 

If only. 

And only if

you are enough

will you get the job you deserved 

five years ago

but you will never be enough

and your days will deafen you

you will draw defeat 

everywhere you go

draw the ugly

to you

because you will never be enough

till you defeat the system

the system will defeat you

to your last

last breath

last word

last job

(Does it matter? They were the same to you anyway!)

Get up

Pull yourself together 

Don’t let them walk over you.

Don’t you want your prize?

Get up 

Pull your self together

Don’t let them walk over you.

But never for the prize

you deserved

half a decade ago. 

 

her salmon hands

stubby (each finger

like clay stuck together

by a child in play)

her salmon hands

under the tap

scrubbing the lather

on and off

along with her flesh

her salmon hands

rubbed raw,

their white lines

a river delta

her salmon hands

like salmon prepared

for a meal.

I ask if she needs anything

her salmon hands

stop their ritual bath:

good service, she says

but the soap needs refilling.

 

The colour catches his attention,

the red brighter than the spilt blood.

The scarlet woman's shoes toppled

one alongside the other.

Its heels a ruby tower

from which lovers may jump.

The stiletto heels like stiletto daggers

piercing the ground like

a death cry pierces the dead of the night.

The feet that don it

twisted at an angle

like lovers caught in a tangle.

The blood red shining brighter

for the chalk besides, its outline

like words on his press-bureau blackboard,

the blackboard darker than this night.

A click on his mobile

he crops clear the still wearer

from what are 

remarkably red shoes.