I burst in on the bare-legged broken mauve eggs - not my fault, this time,

and make them do it all again. 

Building a new man is like balancing spinning cars on ice in the dark,

the cracked tundra baying for a crash, a spark, a satisfying splash

as dawn gobbles up our purple Prometheus.

I want him to decorate him with wisteria, waltzes of garland,

wrap him up like a Christmas tree,

find a cure for my love and then kill it so I can set him free.

 

He’ll be perfect, I promise, just not this round.

his skin’s too dark a purple, his eyes too brown.

He’ll paint the town lilac, mulberry, violet,

spraying sangria and stoking the fire, not thinking once

of me or us, his mothers in abundance, our connection cut. 

I won’t have him stuck in a rut or scrambling to save us

from a burning building,

he’s too mauve to see melting.

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Charlie Bowden is a student from Hampshire, England, who discovered a love for writing poetry in lockdown after spending years studying it at school. His work has been included in collections by Young Writers and the Stratford Literary Festival among others and he won the 2021 Forward/emagazine Creative Critics Competition. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @charliebpoetry for more.