It was complicated. It was
Swallowing rusty nails
And clawing our way towards something
We didn’t know we wanted.

I remember my sister
All brown eyes and bitten nails
Body bound in towel.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,”
As a stripe of blood
Serpents down her dryad leg.
She points to where her razor slipped.

I remember how ripe the evening was.
He was cool and still
And my ears blushed from the wine.
He quietly asked me home
And my No was quieter.
He picked me up like I weighed nothing.
We were laughing.

First, you. The husk that splits
And out pours newness.
You and one thousand
Parallel: Pisces’ roe
Plucked from above and dropped
Into honeyed Nile to sip her moon-pale tears.
Your pallor Lunaire by sun’s ray unthieved
Inward glowing like tomorrow’s pearl.

Cry farewell to meandering cord then
Drop on silted earth’s cheek.
No words to wield. Now there is nothing
But those life-wrought hands that
Trace the candour of your flailing slouch.
Hands that
Tug on your round-eyed buoyancy
Hands that
Brand you with sour sorrows
Like footprints on the moon.

Calico Beauty,
Without human effort
you win roars of cherish.
lifting not a gloved finger
you give us what we need.
you are soft-nuzzle tentative:
a humble pad-pad-pad
when it longs to be heard.
all softness in your shrinking night-sky back.
my hand searches for the cold baby-down
and
you are sweetly out of reach.
how sweet
indeed.
Dali’s very own
you take your ocelot pride
with surreal stillness
on a pedestal that is not yours.
and sometimes
you rest in foggy caution
and I steal
a close moment.
but too close!
your headlights flash
and you swim away.
I have not the cruelty to pursue you.

mother, your 8.48 touch cloys
and i shut the door on us.
it was never hard for me
to leave you in your lock-up.
behind the hardened walls
your third goblet of watered tears
slips down smooth and clean and you love it like you love to hurt.
you self sustain for the next slow day.
it helps you put on the creatress -
a black-curtained frenzy of contradiction.
you are yourself on yourself
the snake that bites its own tail.
but we dismiss the darkness of it
when what you produce is so bright.
when you beg the ugliness you **** you
the most beautiful flowers grow where you fell.
i put them in a vase on my mantlepiece
for guests to admire.
it is what you want.