'Empty Kitchen' and 'Expiration Date' by Jess Buxton

Image from Unsplash

Empty Kitchen 

I've doled out the colours 

ladle after lead ladle 

tinny clotted hues in a dish 

half charred memories  

creamed in a blender of  

a childhood scorned       sloshing 

over the crisp cold sides

it always was broke 

-n always will be broken 

with a blade chipped singed 

in a crumb-coated lake

plump sugar-coating sticking  

tar from splintered  

surface to glooped 

rotting purpose

the tray clatters empty off the rails 

chugging honeycomb silk through a 

rusting core, molten crevices between 

the cutlery drawer and you 

never once 

thought to seek the dusted 

mallow of sanguine lilac like 

I tried to give you when I doled 

out ladle after ladle of lacklustre.

Image from Unsplash

Expiration Date

(It’s time to throw the flowers out)

We tend not to notice when the

water in the vase turns murky

all turgid and crude in neglect

nor when the stems that once stood tall

slump crooked and fickle against the glass

We tend not to notice when the

effort of pretence is dropped

tired and slackened to a stoop

having lost all conviction that someone

may notice they are stuck in a state of shade

We tend not to notice when the

proud pageant collapses into a

moribund of misery distrait and dripping

a myriad of disillusioned opportunities

to a welter below

We tend not to notice when the

slow mortality of decay leaches

what might have been and

the dwindling beauty of a

marred serendipity has all but wilted away

But when we do finally notice

-and we do-

all that is said for this

shrivelled posy potential is:

It’s time to throw the flowers out

---

Words by Jess Buxton

Images from Unsplash

Edited by Emily Gough