Böcker av Nick Bythrow

Another reflection of days gone by, 2022 Part II is a collection of 184 poems that embody what it means to be human through the lens of the last six months of the year. Poems like "Loss on the Wire" and "The Last Starling" use imagery to explore tragedy in its many forms. But others, like "Shadow Upon Thames" and "On the Eve of Haunting" reveal the complex lights that can pierce even the darkest of nights. "It'll Be Okay" and "Ringing Flame" relay the triumph of persistence, while "Under the Ballroom Floor" and "Best of Every Memory" reflect how love perseveres in all forms. While 2022 Part II is split into parts, each one a reflection of the last six months of the year, it is meant to be explored by you as a reader. Perhaps some poems will be nonsense destinations to you, while others will resonate like a bell. Whatever you feel and experience through this collection is for you and you alone.

Cascading myself into the sea was the easiest route I could have taken. To have the wind whip against my cheeks, invisible razorblades cutting at my falling body. To feel the hard, drum-like beating against my chest as though a bat taking flight had lodged itself between my ribcage. The salt of the sea dozens of approaching feet below, splashing up in white-specked waves of frustration and anger. My eyes would have caught a vision of this dark blue frothing. It was a short but sweet event, an initiation of some kind that didn't truly need to happen, but would for the sake of my personal sanity. I would never again need to worry and wonder and fear, for the sea would swallow me into its abyssal gorge and free me from my nightmare. ...To think I speak of it as if this had been my end. For there were to be many more trials beyond those waves. One of which I see, even today, cresting over the horizon, a violet hue shining in the gloom. I ask, now, how everything in my chest became the swirling torrent it is today. The answer is always the same: It was under the Tree where it all became known. It started the night I went to heaven.