Daisy Thomas is a Welsh poet on the Creative & Life Writing MA at Goldsmiths. She is poetry editor for Golddust and reader for Mistress. She pays her rent by wiping tables.

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Living in the dark

I wear yellow flippers to the party
but nobody acknowledges them
or offers me a drink. It kills me
that people don’t share
my exact feelings, at all times
even when I spike the punch
with old diary entries.
I wept on the bus here
over another school shooting
in America. I fired spitballs
at an immigration officer
through the top deck window even though
it was cold outside and traffic was fast
then returned to sucking my beer yes
through a straw – I had a toothache
made worse by the weather.
I am afraid of  the dentist /
statistics / receptionists / bedroom tax /
the provident woman / the postman
sometimes / preparing tofu / letters
from the bank / letters from school / letters
from distant relatives. It is February
and everybody’s skint and freezing.
I know of a man with no legs
who was declared fit to work
two weeks ago. Without the sun
I can do nothing to fix it all.

A study in departure

I can sit in the old house, empty of the kettle,
the rug, the bedsheets.
Call it fun, my marbles rolling gleefully
with subsidence. The mushrooms dancing with
woodlice on the bathroom floor.
I can photograph the grease inside the oven,
the cracks in the bathroom wall, the gaping
hole in my bedroom door that’s calling for a handle.
I can set polaroids down on the kitchen table,
label them Exhibit A, Exhibit B.
I can put on a white coat, inspect this evidence
of an old planet the size of a terraced house.
Call that fun, too. Take another wet cloth
to the insides of the fridge, soak up its freakish liquids.
Stand on the doorstep documenting days
of bin bags and wait for a neighbour to say, Oh,
you aren’t moving, are you?
I can get a fun haircut for the new place.

Following my favourite poets on instagram

I am wishing owned expensive furniture / a basket full of knitted blankets / ivy from the mantelpiece / I scroll through photographs of fresh asparagus / steak / pink like your lovely cat’s bumhole / a shelf full of mysterious treasures / dusty and still like your poems in Granta/ that I will read 3 years after publication / in a charity shop / heart eyes emoji / wheat blowing in the wind emoji / crystal ball emoji / an evening gathering on your white floorboards / nibbles on the Aga / there’ll be enough wine glasses / and enough guests / that nobody is ever left alone / to partake in a pitiful kindness / like washing the dishes / and if they do / you will call them charmingonline / what is it like to have so many cushions? / abundance is so literary / on another day there are enough pages left / to warrant a trip to the park / to lie down alone on a blanket under a tree / clementines / olives / sundried tomatoes / a birdseye pic of it all / I finally know what golden hourmeans / later at the reading / I am Cousin Itin the corner and / you are judging my friends / and their beautiful big mouths

I unlock a yellow bicycle with an app,
grin like a baby for the first time.
Old men tip their hats, I smile;
I am hope on two wheels. 

Grey cars can scream at me and
it’s true I don’t really get the roads,
but it should be so easy
to get home on your lungs alone.