I begin
crumbling in front of you
fuzzy round the edges.
Hot, sweaty crumbling
like the chocolate chip cookies
I baked to get through my degree.
I want to crumble into you.
Sweet.
Like that
But my crumbling is messy.
The beginnings of us sweet
in my mouth with the rotten egg stale
smell, from my previous decay
still pervasive.
I hope you don’t notice,
the crumbling, I mean.
I hope you notice me.
I bright my eyes
light my teeth,
Turn my lighthouse to face you.
The bricks of that begin
crumbling as well.
I accept, then,
that you must lose your hands inside me.
That my smells are layered.
That my bricks are
half chocolate-chip,
half shadow.
That my beginnings will
always be crumblings, as will my middles.
I have never yet gotten to an end.
Sarah Godsell is an historian and a poet. She began writing in primary school, and began performing in 2009. She has done collaborative work with Vangile Gantsho, among others, and is interested in how poems speak to each other. Her debut poetry collection, Seaweed Sky, was published by Poetree Publications in 2015.