It’s alright. We can still wait near the window,
listen to the doors buckle and pipes gasp
and the silence of no telephones.
At the moment? Well, I’m shaking. It grows
and I’m breathless. I will not lie down
waiting to be choked by chaos and bedsheets,
watching the snow of loose white feathers
as if winter is staying, just for me.
I’ll get lost in the dark. My footprints
will never be found under my mess,
my existence never recognised
under my mistakes. It’s alright-
alright to use a poem to comfort oneself
when one is afraid of something with
no name, face, shape, or threats
felt by anyone but me. At the moment,
I am deflated, cold, waiting for the kiss,
for the lungfuls and the lightness.
There's backbone on the clock,
and an unknowable goodbye from the moment
you lock yourself out of the house again.
It's a restless voice. The sound of shadows making art.
Wishes on the kitchen counter but they aren't yours.
Not mine either, I don’t think.
We are fragile petals burnt by storms and sunbeams.
Our Sunday morning mistakes chiseled into meteors.
Hidden and haunted, a dusty clavicle,
a sleepless staircase, a dawn that glows,
the echoes of your heart’s drum from
inside your chest cabinet.
I wonder what to think of myself, of you,
you in my arms, and me listening
in secret, my own heart ticking against apologies.
When oceans of night are due to fall upon your mind
do you steel yourself before letting go, emptying
and pretending not to be afraid of such vulnerability,
at least until the quiet resolve calls your name
in its own language? I knew that language once,
when it was not made of glass.
Now I watch evolution backwards, buildings of
my dreamscapes spilling, breaking like jars of
blue jam, sweet, starry. Or turning up skeletons,
bricks shaking bones free from unknown graves.
Those are the nightmares. No stars in those.
I used to be able to use keen denial to take hold
of the universe as a fable, a lullaby, a promise,
something that will be relived. But now I am frenetic,
on my knees, searching out the hollowed out space
for some news, some kind of hope, some magic thing
to turn into a mirror and reflect what is behind me
as vivid enough, edgy enough, warm enough,
and just blooming enough for me to safely stretch
out into thrumming air, breathe invisible moonbeams.
