Aspen Writes Poetry

The ocean takes them—   the men in orange, their names stitched to salt-heavy sleeves,   their boots filled with black water,   their last words swallowed whole.   It keeps their secrets.   The deals struck in bar-light,   the hands greased with oil and promise,   the fear that hums beneath metal grates.   It takes the broken rig, the snapped rope,   the breath that never made it back.   But not theirs.   Not the ones in suits, in rooms high above the tide.   Not the ones who sign papers with hands clean of crude.   Not the ones who say progress  and mean profit.   The ocean spits their lies back,   coats the shore in their silence,   blackens the wings of gulls,   writes their names in dead coral,   burns their reflection in a rising tide.   One day, the water will rise to meet them. ...

 They fade like breath on glass, names you once carved into the bark of your days, now softened, swallowed by time. You meant to call. You meant to write. You meant— but the weeks tightened into years, and the silence grew a spine. Once, friendship was a door left open, no need to knock. Now, it’s calendars, excuses, a well-meaning let’s catch up that never quite catches. The past is a museum, and you are the last visitor, fingers hovering over glass cases, tracing the shapes of people who were once as close as skin. You tell yourself it’s life— the jobs, the miles, the weary weight of being grown. But in the quiet, when the phone does not ring, you wonder if they think of you, too— if their ghosts visit, just the same.

I wrote a poem in response to this article.  People who were autistic were treated in a similar way before awareness training and no one is just a little bit ADHD, you either have a diagnosis or not.  You say it's a trick, a trend,   a queue-jump for pity, a handout.   But I see them—   the ones who move like hummingbirds,   thoughts flickering, hands restless,   words slipping like water through fingers.   I know what it is to be measured,   to have your struggle held up to the light   like a counterfeit note,   to hear everyone’s a little bit like that.  To hear it’s overdiagnosed.   To hear it’s just a label for the weak.   They said the same about autism, once—   that we were just awkward, shy,   boys without eye contact, girls who’d grow out of it.   A phase. A fad. A failure to try hard enough.   Their chaos is not min...

I see your hands, cold in winter,   the meter ticking down like a clock   winding towards empty. The TV   flickers with news you don’t trust,   faces you don’t know,   and your anger pools in the cracks of the floor.   I understand.   But listen—this is not the fault   of the stranger with hollowed-out shoes,   the mother clutching her child in a doorway,   the man who speaks in a tongue unfamiliar.   They do not turn the key in the Treasury,   do not cut the funding like a butcher   paring fat from the bone.   The government keeps its hands clean,   shuffles blame like cards in a rigged deck.   You watch the numbers rise—   bills stacked high like the promises   they made and forgot.   I understand.   But don’t let them point your fury sideways   when it should be aimed up.

Are you ok? Hope you’ve calmed down.   These things happen.   But this week, Oli’s been fully booked,   late out, asked to see a very poorly patient—   but couldn’t. No space.   Andy asked, as a favour,   for his friend, just diagnosed,   his sight slipping like sand   through a closing fist.   I read it again.   Again. Again.   Each word tightens, a thread pulled sharp.   My name is missing, but I am there—   the gap where he should have been.   I check the locks.   I check the oven.   I check the locks again.   It doesn’t help.   I see him now.   A man, older maybe,   hands resting on the arms of a chair,   blinking into the blur of his own body   giving up on him.   I count the carrots in the fridge.   Six. No, seven.   Line them up. Rear...

Forget the tea, the water boiled to nothing,   the spoon left resting, dry in the cup.   Reply in my head, never in the text.   Panic at the silence I created,   pick apart the spaces where my words should be.   Cry because the tone was wrong,   because the joke missed,   because I said too much,   because I said nothing.   Leave the door unlocked.   Leave the oven on.   Leave my coat on a chair in a place I won’t remember.   Lists, scribbled—on my hand,   on the back of a receipt,   on a note I’ll never read again.   Make another. Forget that one too.   Stand in the middle of a room,   a thought half-formed in my mouth,   lost between the floorboards.   Love too hard.   Apologize too much.   Feel a slammed door like a gunshot.   Feel a frown like the end of the world....

I meant to go.   I meant to go, I really did—   the date circled in ink, a reminder set,   my glasses slipping down my nose like blame.   But the day got tangled,   my mind a flock of birds lifting,   one thing, another,   lost in the static hum of trying.   Then the call—   a voice clipped neat as scissors:   You didn’t show. Someone else—   they were poorly, you know—   was sent away. Your slot, wasted. The words land like glass shattering inward.   My chest, a tight fist.   The heat rises, bright,   sharp as the frames I should have adjusted.   I picture them—   sick, frail, waiting—   eyes dim with need,   while I was nowhere,   guilty and ghosted by my own mind.   How do I carry this?   A name, a face I’ll never know,   the weight of space I took ...