i oft wonder    when i stare at you
(& seeing how you live like sweet morningdew)
if perhaps, you are the work of athena–
or instead, pantheons altogether
          painstakingly threaded your body together.
          i touch your skin and i feel the weather.

did they toil over parenthetical curves
in your eyelashes, so? did they, in fact,
          under faintly ambered nightglo,
paint soothing hairline melodies into your soul?
          it was they!
          who carefully composed       your ballet!
     betwixt your brows and your lips
lies the aria of your kiss,
          and your murmur: the solemn swell of viols.

call me daft and sound your drums!
i think it had to be the ones who
          mastered the craft,    endeavoured to create,
who fired in kilns the earths to bake;
          who designed the bold mackerel,
          its iridescent scale, the peach, how
                    malt can turn into ale;
the celestial potter who sculpted the stars,
        and Jupiter
                 and Saturn
                                and Venus and Mars;
the ones who spun all into creation,
          and could undo infernal damnation;
who weaved you from threads cut by the fates
from the months and years we celebrate.
          from flowers sprouted from the dirt of eden
turned into watercolour, your colour, it deepens.
          as designed how grapes
          may blossom to wine,
the specks on your skin birthed from the divine.

i oft believe    when i stare at you
(& think of how you light me anew)
that i’m a curator given an exquisite delight -
trembling in awe of your beauty and light -
          to treasure and love and care for and feather,
          i touch your skin and i feel the weather.
          i touch your skin and i feel the weather.

i bare my soul to you, my love,
my love, my love, sweet love;
i give to you sweet words hereof
      my love, my love, sweet love.

i’ve loved you, all my heart this while,
promise i will hereafter —
i loathe to lie without you still,
      i flourish in your laughter.

i couldn’t bear to hear a sigh
heavy and leaden with burden and cry
from you,  my love
      my love, sweet love;
i will your pain to pass you by.

even till we’re old and grey,
i ask of you — stay day by day,
to hold my hand and lift me high!
      all while soothing sweet and sky.

do these soft words ring true for you?
my chest aches and heart swells blue,
i dip with tizz, my love accrues,
      my fingers    tend always to you.

i bare my soul to you, my love,
my love, my love, sweet love;
with me watch dusk fall on the doves,
      my love, my love, sweet love.

when he told me
he was taking back the words
‘i love you’
that he said back to me however many moons ago
my womb withered alongside
its comrade of my heart.

it was rushed: he hadn’t meant it yet.
he wanted to, hadn’t grown to,
couldn’t lie - forced a premature delivery unto me;
the crowning burned as it ripped
flesh from muscle from skin from flesh.
it pained him to swallow my travail.

i called him,
asked him if we could meet that night.

those unwelcome contractions curled my spine
as i sat placid in the hard bottomed seat of the train
mostly empty - this was the dark of juvenile midnight.
unboarding, i carried my labour to him up the shallow hill
rising to where he lived. he came down to meet me.

we sat on the biting metal platforms
(supported by their metal pole husbands,
raising their plastic roof offspring)
dotted with circular holes
in the sour sarcasm of a child’s playground;
i called him out here asking him
to let me cry with him, in lieu of over.

the epidural he administered to me
bit me as the needle pierced my giving skin.
the stinging truth: how he lied to please me,
caught up in the moment without thinking.
i asked him if he ever felt love for the girls before me.
he told me no. not like that.

the painkiller worked fast in its cruel irony.
how strange that his directness: impregnated me and
forced midwifeless accouchement down my throat.
and how strange still that it be that very same truthfulness
to comfort and soothe away those selfsame pains.
hark! pay attention to the devil in the details—
i found solace and relief in his candour.

he pampered me with a sprinkling of kisses
dotted below my brow, dabbing away
softly at my tears. my breathing was heavy,
encumbered, but i was no longer pained.

this was the first time he spoke to me for real.
what it all was that we said, i can’t say:
those words are to me precious as gold to a goblin;
they belong to us - those memories are ours. i bit down on
my hand to distract myself - i knew i had to push hard
through the ring of fire. i tore down my middle.
hell - dante’s dreams were my reality.

know this. listen and know the tumultuous labour
- how it was through loving him that i had to
wake through my own childbearing cries -
i got through. but know this. listen and know that it
was only through loving him that the child was safely
born unto me.

this child was for us our honesty.

once, you lifted lines from your palms
and placed them into my own.
      they charred deep into my flesh.
      scarred. insignia in bones.
when i raised my hands to my chest,
      your fingerprints laid on my breast,
            breathing the beat, tasting the sweet;
you ****** like possession: your spirit in me.
      my step was your walk, your melodies, my talk,
i spun pirouettes in your accent,
kissed to turn keys in your locks.
i was a vacuum full, filled with selfsame
      idiosyncrasy– grabbed by the handful:
from your heart to your feet,
      from your lips to your cheek,
            from your lips to your cheek,
      from your heart to your feet.

when you left me, my palms were left blank–
      stead of crashing cymbals of beaches
      i walked only on sand.
god breathed on the glass
and my vision was clouded;
      my soul pounded on the bars,
      for her rosetint was shrouded.
i was robbed of colour.
      the wind left my lungs.
            honey leaked from my eyes,
                  and sugar left my tongue.

i begged for my colour back
and pastels danced in my hair;
      yes, i love him so
      but fear still it can’t compare–
so i pray once more!
heed and hear my warcry call!
      for my colour to come back,
            step into me once more.

i am the universe
come alive, come conscious,
and what is sentience but
a mystery living at the base
of all that we can ever be?
what a strange dichotomy,
how insignificant, and yet
spectacular! inconceivable beauty.
my life is a verse in the cosmic poetry
constructed out of explosive nothing,
a vast vacuum littered with
unknowable everythings.
what to me is familiar idiosyncrasy,
the everyday routine of my wakings
was arbitrarily designed by some intricate,
equation unsolvable, navier-stokes
nothing compared to the machinations
of the minute turbulent eddies
from the swirling currents in my bloodstream
to the patterns formed by astronomical dances
debris and space dust.
so how is it then that in my miniature
dollhouse of a life, am i languished?
i look up through the pollution,
through the night sky, and think
of how much i long to simply bask
in the beautiful artistic whimsy
the universe has let me into,
to embark on the philosophical,
the insurmountable task to uncover
the myriad of deep secrets locked now
for i am the universe come conscious.

my heart is like an ocean perle:
melancholy sleep under saltwater’s curl.
closed, locked, under lost mollusk key,
i wait as not one delves down for me.

midnyght oil burns blue, seagreen;
eyes swell of syghts of things i ne’er forseen.
alone, these shells crack soundlessly
under the water, sealight flickers on me.

once, i was treasured: a young cabochon
pulled from the rocks in a late avalon.
he wore me round his neck - eight seasons due -
but into his heartbeat, i could not imbue.

my heart is like an ocean perle:
melancholy sleep under cold water’s curl.
closed in, locked under lost mollusk key,
i wait as not one delves down for me.

melancholy sleep under deep water’s curl,
melancholy sleep under black water’s curl.
rest now, rest now, sweet ocean perle.

day through night, i face the same fate
my flesh inches closer to its expiry date.

a hell:
my mind is at its limit,
and my body; no longer mine.

each minute goes by, i pray to gods,
every holy name, those i've never heard of,
pray, pray with all my might -
choose a different girl to feast on tonight.

my face was stolen from a world of debris
to support a family i'll never again see
i sold myself, let me be bought,
for just two coins, a price of naught.

a customer.
i tell myself,
don't open your eyes,
don't move a muscle.

hands on my thighs - deja vu
my body to her is just revenue.

memories of every night still live within my body - a bookmark telling me i'll never be my own. a constant image of flesh flickers behind my eyelids every time i close my eyes.

give me my body back.