New Name

By Bethany Rivers

After Rainer Maria Rilke

Let this halted journey have nothing in common with who you are, who you dare.

It happens, every accident, in slow motion; your past finding a full stop. To

all the characters involved, the lorry the car the brakes the punctured glass the

happen of it, the way edges slice on wrists and longing becomes a jagged edge

to torment yourself with for years.  A bad glass of marriage on rocks: the job of

you as yet unfinished; there is no word for the new homelessness; the longing

beauty that has no further reach into his mind. The heart dares to lose, dares

and designs never to follow the trajectory of this map again.  What it is to

dread the dawn of every day, no longer hearing his heartbeat; if you could only find the

simple shape, the thin slit of the horizon, the way of the smooth edge.

Go directly into his gaze and come out the other side: this is your new task. Thereof,

no thing can satisfy your longing: your father’s death, the marriage death, the longing

feeling of that moment and this, are different and yet the same.  Dare to be you. Dare.

Is your name too much for you?  You can always change it to... change it to...

...too near the edge, is there life after falling off a cliff?  The lorry the car the glass the –

much too sharp knife edge existence.  Please find your new name, find a softer edge.

Bethany Rivers was shortlisted for the Overton Poetry Prize and the Snowdrop Poetry Competition in 2019. She has two poetry pamphlets: ‘Off the wall’ from Indigo Dreams (2016) and ‘the sea refuses no river’ from Fly on the Wall Press (2019). Victorina Press published her book, ‘Fountain of Creativity: ways to nourish your writing’ (2019). She is Editor of As Above So Below online poetry magazine. She has taught creative writing for 14 years and continues to mentor writers. www.writingyourvoice.org.uk