Treat yourself

Seeds of a poem

Photo by Rob Wicks on Unsplash

Treat Yourself

On Tuesday I walk to
the library and
I go with a list that
has one book on it,
written on a scrap of
penguin notepaper
my Mum gave me.
I take too long to
choose six books
with thick plastic covers
and have to carry
two under my arm
because I didn't
think to bring a bigger bag.
On the way home I
buy Custard Creams
for 32p and I eat five
hunched over Ariel
until my sensitive tooth
starts singing
and I go and do
laundry instead.

~ Kore Sage

Treat yourself by Kore Sage

The seeds of this poem were first written back in 2024. I remember the morning, maybe because I wrote in my journal. In many ways it was an ordinary Tuesday. I would often go to the library on my way home from a weekly appointment in town but I didn’t always take a list of books I wanted to borrow.

This time I had gone to visit the poetry section and I had an author to look for. I was hungry that day for words, for pages full of real life and for depth I think. I remember finding a slim volume of Ariel by Sylvia Plath and being surprised by how small it was. I had heard of it so I slid it off the shelf and quickly found other books with familiar poet names.

I know I went to the check out counter rather than the self service machine although I don’t remember why. Perhaps I didn’t find the book on my list. The librarian had purple hair and nails and told me that I could borrow up to thirty books at a time. “Oh I’ll never carry that many!” I said as I put two hefty volumes under my arm becuase they wouldn’t fit in my bag.

Satisfied by my haul, I stopped at the shop for biscuits on the way home. What could be more deserving of tea and biscuits than a pile of poetry books?

Later that day, after swapping poetry for household chores, I thought again of Sylvia and how the simplest of things can feel so good. Just poems and tea and biscuits. And then I thought how it shouldn’t be a treat at all, because poetry and tea and biscuits just felt like the whole point.

It’s not a great poem of course, just a speedy expression, a realisation that small things can feel like a treat when perhaps they shouldn’t. I acknowledged the feeling of guilt for eating biscuits over Sylvia Plath when I had, in my Mum’s words, “better things to do”. Which really means, I am not allowed pleasure, I am here to serve.

The verbs are mostly too simple, the language is unremarkable. Which isn’t always a bad thing but here there’s just not much to hang the feeling on. The images are sparse and the lines are awkward.

There’s a lack of details perhaps, the little noticings that make it real. Overall I think it needs a good edit, but the seed is there.