A Poem by Rachael Boast

The Shortest Route to Madrid

after Jan Potocki

Small flowers grow back
between the cracks
of parched ground, saviours
of a moment’s glance.
But we know this, we’ve
been here a hundred times
and forgotten about it all.
The poem as root system
and dark interior spells out
a reminder of when
we were in love with
a secret manuscript,
its mosaic of give and take,
the roulette of time and space
upending hillsides of riddle
and bone. I had no answer
for you, leaving the silence
to speak. But I digress,
between fissures in the light,
into your blue eyes,
the heavy cup of your eyes.
The body reads the world well,
senses its storms and caverns;
concerns at the seam of the rock
overturn the casual map
of existence and convenience.
It is not convenient to drink
out of something this heavy,
or see your eyes when
I’m not ready for them.
Dust comes between us,
rising in clouds of inquisition.
“So ardent to get nowhere fast?”
The body reads the world well,
is arroyo of the word
written in the dust –
the only word that speaks
from the memory of being alive.
Back at the house of the winds
the sacrament is sipped
until we’re falling asleep
to the sound of pages rustling.
I was kneeling to flick
through a book of symbols
for mixed messages
when you appeared again,
blue fire pressed between
pages, never there, but always
leaving something behind for me,
your flower of Segovia,
flower of the wayside, wayside
of forever finding yourself
back where you started
as a test of character; test
as root system and interior,
interior as mirage, revealing
a time we were in love
with a mosaic of give and take
which for the inquisitive
is not exactly any particular
place but something that happens
between the cracks, like this
singular stem of Alkanet.

Rachael Boast is a British poet and author of four collections of poetry published by Picador, Sidereal, Pilgrim's Flower, Void Studies, and most recently, Hotel Raphael. She is editor of Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent Poets, due from Bloodaxe Books in May 2025.