just coping (blue)

Natasha Dust

two hundred and seventy-three breakfasts with you.
I still save a space beside me 
each morning.
I fill up the kettle; enough tea for two
I’ll make some for you
if nobody’s home. 
it’s useless, I know.
you’re fading anyway.
I could see you so clearly then
warm and blue as the rare sky of childhood
a steady hand when the rains heaved through
long fingers of light 
that pressed on my forehead
my collarbones
the back of my neck
my sternum.

I told my therapist eventually.
he said you were nothing 
to worry about.
I told him I was never worried about you.
I don’t think he believed me.
when I was walking home after,
crying, as I often do
you were walking too, or
drifting, maybe, gentle and 
bright and 
blue.
neither of us were really there. 
the city beat and thrummed around us
in absolute silence.
it felt like home 
in a way I hadn’t known
I was allowed to feel.
the way I imagine the planets feel
when they spin away from the light
and into the dark
and back again.

Natasha Dust is currently a student at the University of Sydney, where she majors in English and Biology. She is an emerging poet who has loved reading and writing poetry since she was very small, and so far has been published in the online journal Not Very Quiet. She is excited for the possibilities the future holds and hopes to publish a collection of her work someday.