“and it is all so clear, and everything is liminal
but i'm okay with that!
i am finally so so happy
and i love you and love you and love you,”
a tied tongue loosely mumbles my first name
and then the call drops out.

under a daze, i gather a
stranger’s hair back behind her ears.
her dainty neck cups her head,
and hangs it over the gutter.
she is beautiful and blind
and wreaking of daffodils
and spearmint
but her voice sings of ginger beer.
she acts numb to her ****** knee
dripping on the pavement in gloops.
but she looks right through me,
her arms hover around my neck
“oh, thank you!! i love you!!!”
she doesn’t know my name but
she speaks tenderly
from an acidic tongue,
and wipes her mouth,
on the sleeve of my denim jacket
and staggers back into the hall.

i see an animal at the centre of the road,
it’s leg bone white and pure,
to protrude out from torn brindle,
waiting for the midday sun.

but it felt good.
the open front door,
the peeled varnish,
upon frail wood
- swollen,
to gradually bend off
two rusted hinges.

it served only as a written invitation
for all critters and
unpleasantries
once shut out
to linger in the cold.

i stacked my things
in cracked boxes,
upon cracked shelves.
ancient coffee rings printed
from the base of ***** mugs,
like half-moons,
on the lips of wooden panels
drenched in whitewash.

a bare face bathed
chin up, clenched eyelids
in the light of a sky outside.
a hollow echo,
the dripping of water
inside this vacant cave.
the china cup is half full.

a single pull, transitional.
the separation of two stars.

her father told me
she laid in lavender fields.
a light breeze in 1989 carried from
winter, through to spring.
“oh! the allergy,
it set in her skin”, he said
like dried violet paint
- boiling on the pavement.
the purest blur of sunlight.

as a child i stole
old photo albums
that contained the musk of
her youth.
cupping them in my arms.
the fear of being robbed of something
that i never understood.

i remember her
and her sisters in a straight line
six shoulder blades kissing
cement ridges in brick walls.
aunt melissa painted lions,
the surface of the moon,
sticky fingers on chalky black canvas.
until her body gave up in 1995,
her two frozen lungs.

the youngest sibling locks herself in the bathroom,
peering into the mirror,
she observes the soft face before her
- it is freckled, a round nose.

she removes the stained article of clothing,
inspecting her curves for evolving figures,
life fast-forward footage of a blossoming carnation.
her ******* are pale against a strand of light,
reflecting upon her hips from the silver bath head.

her father knocks on the door.
"i'm fine!" she cries.
as she stood over the running bath, it glided down her thigh,
like watered down paint, evolving across the canvas.

i remember you when things were better.
the numb sting of winter
wind, his open window and the way
the warmth of his eyes melted
my coldness.

the rain came, but
i didn't mind.
we had an hour left together
before the city lights swallowed
you
and all the constellations.
in a moment,
the noir sky turned grey
and then we were home.

somehow we're the same, with
that outer glow that's
seemingly warm -
but
the inside is cool, and
hollow.

i think of you fondly,
every day.

at age four
my younger brother dressed,
in different shades of green.
laying on his stomach amongst wet lawn.
its stains transferred transparently
as a mark of irrelevancy.

mother checks everything twice,
three times,
before leaving the house,
that has never burnt down,
and never could.

father lives as half his age,
in the backyard,
underneath a mound
of damaged tin sheets.
injecting himself with something
that will never be uttered -
“not under this roof”.

at age twenty
in the house on a hill,
alone on the kitchen bench,
with two bare feet in the sink.
i peer out for
that naked yellow hue.
i grasp at it until it becomes tangible.
the tangerine dust in my throat.
the impossibility of it.

the weight of my mind is polar
orange and viscous.
its fragility hangs in a gentle orbit,
gathering dust,
rubbing dully against my inner skull
- an object of my deepest desire.

but wide eyes gazed at you
amongst the black
through the kitchen window.
the house on the hill,
the blue door.
take off your shoes when you come.
i have needed you for twenty years.
but

i was not present when he intruded,
underneath my clothes.
but you were.
but it was gentle, a touch like a closed fist
but clamped, fumbling.
but
his love called his number, to no answer
a single, white noise -
the static after he says his own name.

i exist
as three personas
buying fast-fashion with money
that i will never have.
five pumps of perfume
coat my paper-thin flesh -
that smells the way sunshine feels.
gold coconut coated ringlets
bounce
from my pointed collar bones
- perfectly.

tomorrow i will thrift second-hand things.
the makeup of another stained
on the lips of old t-shirts
and i’ll adorn
rusted, gold-plated rings.
i won’t wash my hair,
and i’ll swim in the river
like free emily -
beautiful and brave.
and i’ll read ‘monkey grip’
for the eighth time
- shamelessly.

at night i’m in europe,
alone in a small, sea-side village
called a name that i will never pronounce.
i’ll wear hand-made sundresses
and lay bare-breasted on rooftops.
i don’t speak their language,
but they probably speak mine
- effortlessly.

i am my own oneirocritic
sleepless now,
after being sleepless,
for so so long.
the hunger for the heart to slow
to a gentle pace -
like those that i love,
so terribly.
i’m sorry grandma,
about your spine,
and the stairs you only just built,
inside a generational space.
a walking-frame that doesn’t fit
through any hallway.

this is a poem
that I know I can never finish.