Three Poems by Georgia Bartlett-McNeil
An Always Friend
If it's been a day, it's been twelve years. Sweet seventeen clasped hands, released yellow balloons with blue ribbons that hold as tight to our dreams as we do. We sang in harmony - we were always good at that - begging the world to bring on tomorrow like we knew what that meant. And as the world often does, we were drawn in different directions: granite city blues left behind for a chance at the bright lights, a life of art. And we're living it, mate. It's the last day of the Fringe and the rain plays on windows like it is the show, and we embrace just like we did all those years ago - the first not-last time - the two of us knocking on the doors of thirty, but with a single word dissolving into the smile of seventeen again; across time and across the miles, an "always" friend. It's been twelve years if it's been a day; the noise of the street makes the hushed room a golden scene. And there's so many places you've still to go, but I'm so proud of everywhere you've been; the stages and screen you've graced and those that are yet to come. Soon these dreich August skies will fade, and we'll both be two yellow balloons with blue ribbons, dancing with our dreams in the sun.
Anthropology
The water ripples as if it is touched by rain, though the sky is empty. And she wears a smile on just kissed pink lips -a quiet thing. Her heart is heavy at their departing, with longing, with want, not need - there is a difference. The sun stretches, yawns, its mouth open wide enough to devour the world, its arms spilling light like a gift or an afterthought: a girl so keen to be loved she would empty herself of all that she is for it. The waves throw up spray; a tempest, a protest, trying so hard to be a mirror the girl can use in order to see herself clearly... but she excavates herself looking for something that was always there. Brushes away, tenderly, at bones, labels them the discovery of the century; the epitome of a lifetime's worth of work, but will not, cannot, name them her own. For this is to admit to brokenness, rather than to realise you can be whole alone. Crows dance upon the crests of waves, wet beaks and talons glint, shining like jet in the winter morning. Their wings delicate in their movements powerful in their purpose. She names herself "full" as she stands there hollow and gaping. Watching the sun rise and wishing it could swallow her whole.
Idiomas
Duolingo asks me, in Spanish, to translate the phrase, "How many languages do you speak?" Cuantas idiomas tu hablas? And in that moment, I wonder. How many languages does Love count as? It cannot be just one. Surely. The love between my mother and I does not directly translate to the love I have for my friends, and that love does not exactly correlate to the love I have for my siblings not by blood but by choice, and then there's the love I hold for him. There are levels to the language; in the English, when I say "I love you", it does not always mean the same thing. I will love my mother until the day I forget the name she gave me; I will love my friends until my breath leaves my body, or until they do; and there are no words to describe his - bottle the sunlight, the sound of laughter and seal it all with a kiss, it's easier to put it that way. Love as a language goes far too deep to count it as just one tongue. So, when Duolingo asks me how many languages I speak, I cannot really give it a straight answer, There's English, French, Spanish - the latter two are fragmented attempts at truth; I would never yet declare myself fluent - and Love, of course. So technically it's three, but in reality, it's three plus infinity.
Georgia Bartlett-McNeil is a poet and spoken word artist living just outside of Edinburgh. She has been writing for 18 years and performing for a decade. She has been published in multiple magazines including Nutmeg and Dreich, and has been featured at multiple poetry events and festivals across Scotland and the North of England. She is the 2023 Loud Poets Central Belt Slam Champion, and self-published her first poetry pamphlet, Her-I-tage, in October 2023. Her writing varies from the hilarious to hard hitting, covering a massive range of topics that always speaks to an audience.