All those genuine miracles will one day dissolve to legend,
grease of fish shop paper, the morphine tale of a parent
drifting in and out of death. We hope poetry will defend
them, the magic of what is now soiled mendacity. We meant
it to glitter in black and white, not the name to transcend
but the hand that penned it, the dazzling flesh that dreamt
like you, that groped amongst sheets for the tail end
of feeling like you. That hand is yours, the one that went
to libraries, reached across ink-stained centuries to friends
that wrote “you are not alone”. The miraculous segments
fall from journals, a Lake District cottage, all portend
the intangible can be salvaged. Fumble, no time misspent
seizing at what cannot be grasped, history that stemmed
beyond books, that asks only for one lone heart’s consent.

- Emily Kate Groves

To you, a slug-salter, it was sacrificial,
swallowing the cancerous whole, gristle

and sinew. Throat glottal as the bone
clubbed words to silence, the overblown

promises of your weathered elegies.
You believed only death brought legacy

to light, your silent surrender worthy then
of heroism, those blood and ink synonyms.

- Emily Kate Groves

A one body mattress was sufficient for an under six foot two,
with just a single teacup and a knife our bottle screw.
You would eat the heart of toast, windowpane crusts
good for my wilting tresses, as you had curls enough. 

- Emily Kate Groves

Of all the elements, they chose fire for the heart,
as though it should burn and we could compare
the scars of zealous kindle. Where the skin parts
we pour metaphor, as if it is lava, the final glare
of charcoaled lovers. Why not water, a flooding
or drowning? Why not quaking earth or stifled air?
It must be human nature, something from nothing,
and yet we strike a hundred matches for the flare.

- Emily Kate Groves

You paint your walls
a Mother’s blue lace negligee,
blushing a
my first bike pink at the
biscuit tin brown
eyes of the postman.

Flecked you answer
“maybe I should of gone
with casserole dish coral.”

- Emily Kate Groves

And what if the Romantics were one lone ghost
that truly knew of finite love
and knew it took an infinity of haunting
to explain how deep it ran,
classically.

How classically deep it ran.

Classically,
how deep it ran.

But what if “what if” were too sentimental?
T. E Hulme, tell me if you objected
at “one lone ghost.”

We made a mess, shed clothes and peeled back flesh
to reveal imperfections that were not adorable
nor endearing.

We made a mistake, and continued making it for a year
until our bodies could take no more, my soul keeled over
and fucking a spirit with no fight wasn’t much fun for you.

We made a promise, to keep away, to avoid the crevice
of my bed, the pitfall of my underground station
yet somehow you fell back in, MIND THE GAP.

- Emily Kate Groves

With coppers we scratched initials until machines
reluctantly swallowed, teasing the educated
poverty of “you bring the glasses, I’ll provide wine”.
We’d MIND THE GAP and wait on the leafy floors
of London’s railway platforms, “it’s minus two here,
how’s it your end?” In heels that closed the gap
I teased you over inches, tufts of hair that pushed
the pencil line higher up the wall. We hid unequal
tears in crackled phone lines, an oh-two-oh-eight
and an oh-one-nine, craning out of bedroom windows,
“what about now?” The gulf widened, string marked
out miles across atlases, testing the thickness of our
soles , “I’m not sure I can stand this any longer”,
but we both knew your heels could only wear so much
until foreign pavements tripped you back to me.

- Emily Kate Groves

Love hearts in biro stain your weak efforts
already sealed and stamped with a large ‘F’.
Shakespeare mocks you and Einstein simply points,
Naked likes in an exam hall fool you.
You regurgitate equations and toast,
a curdled education, plum sour.
Teachers stare with that blood pen in their hand, 
knees shaking, you anticipate the grade.
A hundred teenage pores drip with worry.

Life is an essay awaiting judgement,
why bother? No one marks it anyway.

- Emily Kate Groves