The hardest poem I would ever write

How could I describe your eyes?
I could say that they are closed globes
Whole worlds turn under your lids
As you sleep and I lie awake next to you
Resisting the urge to trace a sleepy finger
Over their soft shells.
I could try and pay lip service to the
Blue-glass bright reflection of them,
The flecks of white that twinkle when
You smile, just like your dad’s.
Whole sonnets I could attempt to write
About the creases at their corners,
A cartographer’s dream to map their
Journeys, what they’ve seen along the way.
I would love to be able to put into metaphor
The deep feeling of being untethered
From the earth, free of gravity’s game,
I get when yours meet mine, I might talk
Of the weightless feet of astronauts
Whose bodies sail and swim
In the cosmos.
I might begin to address the softness
Of them, the way I sometimes dream
Of placing my tongue around them,
Cool burr against your skin,
Of tasting each lash with lips and teeth.
I could write all of this, would carve it
On a stone for you, but it would be
the hardest poem I would ever write.

E. A. Moody

E. A. Moody is a runner, writer and mother from Wales. She is a new poet and has been published in Black Bough poetry. Her favourite poets are Larkin, Carol Ann Duffy and Eliot. Twitter: @eamoody1