top of page
in case its unclear pexels-andrew-neel-4436700.jpg

In case it's unclear

Sandra Noel

I wasn’t in the biscuit tin, garibaldi, bourbon

cream.   I   didn’t   prickle   in a    box of pins,

wasn’t the rocks in your sack of dreams. Nor

was I lurking   on   the   stairs,  Mum waiting,

you working.   Not   the   key   slotted in the

door,  the  creek  you  heard  on   the wood-

stained floor.    Didn’t shoulder-cry teenage

tears,   didn’t love him anyway.  It wasn’t me

when   I   dated   more,  q uick   succession,

rebound boys  —   I didn’t thank your caring

ploys.   Didn’t  argue  politics,  never  one to

disagree;   didn’t   like  to  see  you sick. And

tired.   I  wasn’t  the twist in the garden hose,

not   the   wind,   the  sweat  of   your   med-

soaked  clothes. I  wasn’t your pain.   I wasn’t

the  words  in  the  stories  I told,  the dot on

the  screen  as  the   tv  turned   off.  Not the

daisy  in  the concrete  yard.   I wasn’t   there

when you cast off.

Sandra Noel is a poet from Jersey, Channel Islands.  She enjoys looking at the ordinary in unusual ways, her passion for water and sea swimming often featuring in her work. Sandra’s work appears online and in print with The Phare, Flights, Black Nore Review, Dragon Yaffle, Cerasus, Reach and Dawntreader.  She has poems on the buses in Guernsey in The Guernsey International Poetry Competition. Sandra is working on her first collection. 

bottom of page