Three Poems by Theresa Muñoz

Last Words of Eliza Junor

So I’m dying. But I’m not unhappy. I’m thinking of you instead
in this rose bedroom, when yesterday’s sun still warms the doors.
Time passes in glimpses, in echoes of curlews. I think in ship knots, tangled memories:
you were not to leave sugar-land, Demerara with us. I kissed the door in my pinafore.
Never coming back, declared William, your son and my brother.
With Father we sailed to Scotland’s Black Isle: land of pines and minky whales,
rocks and water. Nevermind the sun playing keepie-uppies at the stained glass,
as the priest shut the doors; a private ceremony, he smiled but I understood.
For school, Father picked three dresses for me in colours of sugar:
brown when picked, white when processed, and blue, in the early dawn.
I smoothed eyelets of lace. Even in cloth, we search for ways to let in light.
When we got those looks from strangers, it was your soft skin they were looking at.
So much you have missed, still in your granite bed. But I have held you
in the kettles and tents of my handwriting; strict teacher’s college
and the smoky slums of London; then here, back to where it all began,
at Rosemarkie’s dressmakers. A bit of lace, a bit of heather.
I made them all in your image. Your hair in the threads, a faint silver.

Meghan and Harry Move to Vancouver Island

I know Horth Hill and its network of paths. Rock shelves
blank-faced, like a person hard to trust. Framed by pines,

the press snap them visibly relaxed; digital snow day
of west coast vibes and gore-tex silhouettes.

It’s early, misty and our socks bear a fair-isle pattern.
We go up Horth Hill, a monadnock, guts of an ancient glacier:

stratums of soil, rock and ice sugar packed as cake layers.
We move deer-quiet, thoughts polished to jade,

musing why they’re here: to vent, spill tea, shed drama,
storm mushroom trails in uphill spirals,

to be lost. Or to get lost. To climb above cityscapes.
To reach near-summit and see the after

before the before: islands simmering in blue fathoms
of unhappiness. Or hope. And it’s this sneak preview

that makes us still, reach out, maybe kiss, maybe look out.
If hikers saw us from a distance they’d wonder

were we rooted to the earth. Thoughts of that kind.
So now we know, this famous couple. They came,

grew armour, turned into trees, and stayed.

Couples Therapy

The solution is to rage at the hourglass on the mantle,
candle of vanilla, ginger spice. To keep your face open, generous,
not deny your steeled jaw when your partner tells your marriage story –
We fight. It’s our families, they don’t get along. It’s affecting us –

to the listening room. A room witness to couples snowily dissolving,
aubergine sofa and matching armchair, stone wallpaper
and giant mirror in lieu of a window, metal circle framing
your own eyes, glossy black sadness.

And the therapist you chose off a website for her jazzy glasses
whose voice is deep, like mellow sparks of wood-smoke,
she smiles. More at your partner than you. We’re here to go on a journey
she says, or some poppycock, and hands you both lit tablets

which your partner takes with a dramatic sigh, though you accept,
wondering who else has quizzed their own marriages today,
under a parachute wifi symbol. 80 per cent charge left.
And the quiz is long, maybe 20 questions, a system of binary ends:

I am tired of doing all the work in this relationship. True.
I find my partner attractive. True. We make time for each other.
False. Nduja sausage, corn fritters, view of the canal,
warm white lights on the decking. That was your last date, six months ago,

you drank hot chocolate silently and went to bed on your left sides.
We share similar values and have chosen similar paths. False.
I easily trust my partner when they’re out of the house. False.
My partner and I laugh easily with each other. False.

Have you finished, the therapist whispers, and you haven’t,
but you hate her and your partner too,
for taking their mother’s side on Sunday brunches.
So. I’m leaving, you say and stand up suddenly

to everyone’s dismay and embarrassment,
out of time. You see the hourglass now, bitter brown sand.

Theresa Muñoz is a Research Associate at the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts at Newcastle University, where she teaches Creative Writing and co-directs the Newcastle Poetry Festival. She has published one shortlisted collection of poetry, Settle, and her work has appeared in several international journals. In 2018 she won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship and a Muriel Spark Centenary Award, and in 2020 she received a Creative Scotland Open Fund Award to write one of the first poetry sequences on inter-racial couples, entitled ‘Mixed Feelings’.