you can’t plan on the heart

i.

on my run, someone
collides with me, knocks
my glasses clean off.

without them, the world
dissolves into a
landscape of infinite possibility;

any blotched greenery has
the potential to burst
forth into flower.

ii.

on my way home, the sky is
heavy with unspilled rain –

nothing, not even people,
is as unpredictable as the weather.

a bunch of starlings is blown past
by the wind, winging their way across the grey,

and I toss my heart upwards to the sky,
calling out to it: be brave, be brave, be brave.

you turned my stomach into a magma chamber

after you left, I began to vomit up stones.
about the size of an egg,
they were rough enough
to scratch a fingertip but
smooth enough to roll
in the palm.

mostly they were pinkish-grey;
some had thin white veins
shooting through. a friend of
mine noticed them once
on the windowsill, and exclaimed
over the perfection of the crystals.

eventually, I moved them
outside to use as borders for
my plant beds, marking the
edges of where things were
allowed to grow and
where they were not.

Miriam Gauntlett studies, works & writes in London. Her work has recently appeared in Porridge Magazine and Dear Damsels. She can usually be found reading, dreaming of her next outdoor adventure or tweeting @miriaaaaamg.