By Abbie Maguire
In the modern era, it seems there is an infinite struggle for power. Whether political, economical or social, the battle for moral, monetary or governmental supremacy exists throughout the world. It is a battle that never seems to be won.
There is a power excluded from my aforementioned list that possesses a potency I am always overcome by – that would be the power of the written word.
I first became interested in writing when I was five or six years old. I would write fragments of sentences that probably didn’t really make sense in my little notebook and I truly treasured every word because it was something that was mine, the power to write what I wanted was with me and something no one else could take it away.
It was when I came to secondary school that I really discovered my love for other people’s work. I realised I had the luxury of being able to live in a world I wouldn’t have otherwise known for a few hundred pages and then begin another journey just by picking up another novel. It became a habit I exploited mercilessly. I’ve watched Cathy of Wuthering Heights fall into the trap of lost love; I’ve witnessed Meursault of The Outsider commit his beach murder; I’ve rode on a horse and cart with Chichikov of Dead Souls as he manipulates the misfortunate; I’ve danced in Paris with Lady Ashley of Fiesta; I’ve sat silently in Rebecca’s hotel room; explored the realms of partnership with Dorothy Parker; strolled down Proust’s Swann’s Way; saw Henry James’ persona consumed by the Beast In The Jungle; stared at Oscar Wilde’s untainted youthful portrait and even reminisced down Bond Street with Mrs Dollaway. English grew to be my passion and poetry is what fuelled it.
I became inspired by everything and everyone that surrounded me. When something bad happened to me or someone close to me, I yearned to turn it into something beautiful. From merely reciting any of my poems, a complete stranger could take a glimpse at my once privy thoughts, my inspirations and events in my life that are far too impassionate to leave unacknowledged. Every poem I have ever penned is derived my own experience, or an experience of someone close to me that has affected me either intentionally or inadvertently. My poems are the thoughts that run through my brain, the blood that chases in my veins and every other element that binds me together. Though my numerous inspirations strongly influence my writing, my poems are poems that truly embody the person that I am, every obstacle I have openly and sometimes reluctantly overcome and the people who infuse my life with love, friendship and regret.
I wrote this poem a few years ago about one of my close friends who had suffered from a heartbreak. I desperately wanted to help her but I had no idea how I could, so naturally, I couldn’t write it from my point of view. Instead, through what she told me, I wrote it from hers. She was so concerned about how the world saw her and how she saw herself that every self analysis she made was so detrimental to her. I always knew she would be strong again – and she is stronger now than I’ve ever seen anyone.
A Sunlight Never Broken
Liquid onyx wraps around her legs like glistening halos sickened in the sun,
The deviancy of fear crawls through the waters, she’s lost with nowhere to run.
Streams of blood trickle from her wrists and impale into diamond pools,
Her tears shimmer in the smouldering light; her own screams make her recoil.
The trees stand like disjointed skeletons, riddling the corners of her will,
She always lives like she’ll be dead tomorrow; her self belief will never heal.
Blood freezes silently in her veins when she knows she is always alone,
Strewn in amongst the reeds and the sedges, the undulant darkness has become her home.
The willow casts sinister shadows against the gun metal flesh on her bones,
The water is too shallow here; her feet bleed from the serrated stones.
But in the onslaught of a torrent, she falls to the bottom of the creek,
Oxygen latches to the surface; her eerie staring has made her so weak.
Water buries her scrawny body, and ribbons of grass slit open her skin,
Her blood seeps in strands and is carried by the current, but a vigour radiates within.
The water carries her breathing body, coiled up in crimson, to the shore,
But it won’t ever stop Niagara, from falling to the floor once more.
The truth is imbued in the vermilion river, her imprudent obsession ossified,
Barely gasping up against the bank, in littered glass she’ll look one last time.
Will you forgive her when wings adorn her, when she can escape her quivering reflection?
The stream that she lies in is no more than a mirage from a sunlight that is never broken.
