On the Breaking Down of Leaves
Your tangled intricate lace
more finely-spun
and delicate
as you waste away –
emaciated –
in your attempt to sustain
those around you.
Your fall is soft and noiseless
a sail to a forest floor,
your sacrifice
unnoticed
and your gold skeletal remains
incomparable to
the bright and gaudy blooms
that shoot
from your slow melt into the earth.
Glossy foliage
and scented stamens;
nature’s trumpeted score
to your silent
decomposition.
(Not a) Big Deal
If you scrambled
every moment
to steady yourself
on the ever-moving
mountain summit of the day,
then you too would scoff, sneer,
at a germ –
a string of invisible
complex
unfathomable molecules –
that flit from lung to lung,
dissolving structure and devouring tissue,
because an abstract,
a possible,
a might-be,
a slight chance,
death
doesn’t freeze you like midnight autumn wind
doesn’t gnaw your insides like five-day hunger
doesn’t throb like a swollen eye, hand, cheek,
jaw,
doesn’t drop in your belly like his heavy
footsteps
doesn’t carve a hole out of decades with
needles
blades
pills
ropes.
Lauren Forner
Lauren is currently completing the Masters in Creative Writing course through Macquarie University. She has been a high school English teacher for ten years, and also works as a school counsellor with disengaged and at-risk teenagers. She writes micro-fiction and poetry, and publishes the latter on her blog: https://hellopoetry.com/LRF/