Recovering – Katy Corderoy

You aren’t really my best friend. But you are all I have ever known.

We are very thankful for Katy Corderoy’s exceptional submission. Katy is currently completing her Masters in Children’s Literature whilst working full time, but still managed to find the hours to kindly create and share her talents. Katy’s poem ‘Sunset’ recently won the Purple Breakfast Review award. Poetry for Katy is a ‘a way to say those things which are really difficult to say otherwise’.


You have been with me for years. 

My best friend, accepted and known, silent.

You are the frightened look in my eyes. 

The rabbit in the headlights. The butterfly in my stomach.

You are my best friend, accepted and known, loud.

I hear you, shouting at me, it will come.

I listen to you, you guide me, with you I am numb.

You are me, the sparkle in my eye, the bones in my body.

How can I say goodbye to all I have ever known?

Are you me? I don’t think you are, you are you.

I don’t need you anymore, yet life still hurts.

I want you to numb me, to free me from this pain.

But Anna, what is this pain? Why am I empty?

Lonely, misunderstood, a void of suppressed desire.

Am I hungry? Of course not, I have no hunger for life.

How can I, when the world is hungry for love.

You are my best friend, loved and let go- leave.

I hear you, I feel you. Your caresses, the kindness.

I see you in those lonely dark nights and in the stars above my bed.

I see you in the cracks in my ribs, the pain in me.

You are my best friend, but I can’t let you stay.

I think back to nights on the ‘green thing’,

To crying, to laughing, to drunken whispers.

I see you in everything, you are all I have ever consistently had.

But I need to start a new chapter,

I need a different success,

I need another peace.

You aren’t really my best friend. 

But you are all I have ever known. 

Maybe the light that seeps through the cracks in me will shatter into a rainbow,

But how will I know if you are always there, a polyfiller, a plaster across a gap.

I need to accept those holes in me, I can’t give love, I can’t give life. I am me.  Imperfect, alone, I am the space in between the branches. Can anything be empty? Are those gaps not precisely what constitutes those branches? 

Leave me with my broken bits. Leave me. Leave me with the gaps – I won’t fill them, I don’t need to. I can’t give love, because I am love. 

Katy Corderoy


Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s