sweethearts.
by and published in Edition Two of Pomegranate
you joked the blanched dead bodies
on the desks were sugar mice,
like the ones you bought me when I was eight,
sectioned with chicken pox
but when i ran the blade down
the gossamer stocking of skin
your cheeks bleached
pale as white chocolate buttons
and as i peeled it back,
saw the long dark channels of tendon
interlaced like strawberry shoelaces,
and exposed the heart through a crack
of ribs, you fit to faint, whispered
looks like a cherry bomb
watched the bulge
of atrium under scalpel
penetrated the left ventricle,
watched the last sweep of blood
pulse through the arteries,
pool like syrup under our lens.
you left the table,
went to the back of the room
with the sour faced children,
your cheek turned to your elbow
while i removed a testicle,
scrutinised the fragility of bones,
etched my initials
into the yellow stone stomach.
ten years on, your tears come to mind
as i’m stripping a breast of its skin
showing my nephew
a wishbones crack
or the smell of sugar smacks
me as i pass a candy floss stall.
Carla Jones
Carla Jones’ poetry has been published in Iota and The New Writer. She has won regional poetry prizes and received several commendations, is a regular at The Poetry Cafe and has read with Tall-Lighthouse. She is 27 and lives in Bedfordshire, though she’s currently tunnelling her way out, and would like to express that she has been a vegetarian for 20 years.