Caroline Burrows’ poetry has featured on BBC Radio 4, been printed in BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and shown at the Sheffield Adventure and Kendal Mountain Film Festivals.  Her short stories have been published in The National Flash Fiction Anthology and The Lancaster One Minute Monologues.   She has written articles for several publishers including Cycling UK & Adventure Cyclist magazines, worked with cycling theatre company The HandleBards, and is taking her own one-woman cycling poetry show on tour again.

 

Heartbroken and hungover in Oxfam,

Neither are safe states to be in,

Amongst the shelves where I bought you that book,

The one about Guitars and Zen.

 

I browse what’s now called pre-loved poetry,

While a song makes me feel tortured,

Donated Juliet is in Dire Straits,

Everything in here’s unwanted.

 

I find a napkin in my bag, just in case,

The rising tide of tears overflow,

As each book mocks me with cruel verses,

I read differently not long ago.

 

I fight the urge to rip out the pages,

Scrunch them up, and set them alight.

Such behaviour in a charity shop,

Might feel good, but wouldn’t be right.

 

I scan for editions by Sylvia Plath,

None.  Her works don’t get regifted.

But two copies of Crow perch on the rows,

Ironic. Ted’s get discarded.

 

To try and distract myself, to not cry,

On the napkin I write in a scrawl,

‘Cos the notebook you gave me with roses on,

I shut out of sight in a drawer.

 

Back home, I transfer this into that notebook,

Poetic justice.  Don’t you think?

The dam breaks, the rose pages get watered,

And black petals are made from blurred ink.