Once upon a time when suicide was a thought

folded inside a thought folded inside

a thought folded inside my dad’s

breast pocket at the edge of the reef

every member of my nuclear family

lies down nothing wrong with the water

they say it’s fine to breathe just watch

then suicide pulls up slow as a planet

Once upon a time when suicide was a whippersnapper

snap snapping at our heels my mum

wore sunglasses four days in a row

in December the sky with no bruise of its own

when we went to the park I could tell

the other mums kept touching their eyes

the water being fine to breathe I decided

to kill a beetle drop its body down the slide

Once upon a time when suicide was planting beans

in a dark cupboard and I named my bean Felix

around the time I realised my family

was probably very wrong was when

I started going for sleepovers I think

I dropped a bowl and nothing stormed

from the edge of the reef from the edge

of the bed suicide switches the sun off

Once upon a time when suicide was the decision to drink

500ml of celery juice every morning

on an empty stomach or the decision

to walk in one direction for a year

in order to avoid certain patterns

of thought suicide is so close we can

smell its lavender breath my sister

takes my hand links her fingers

Once upon a time when suicide was a year filling

with slow increments of awful picnics

another birthday squashed flat fossilised

my mum in sunglasses again I think

we were out for a curry no one talked

cheering a few metres from the reef is suicide

how long do we have to watch

not long now croons the coral

–

Image © judy_and_ed

This excerpt is taken from More Sky, forthcoming from Carcanet in January 2023.