Rohan P

Rohan P Sep 2018

your white dress
trailed along the high highway
brushing leather and sage

i knew why you were driving
away:

the consecrated hordes and
suitcases in your closet closed
on their broken hinges:

i never felt so askew,
such a part of you.

the answer lies in the arches

Rohan P Sep 2018

these sunken hills

you have taken
me to these sunken hills
to stare at the cold
stone bunker
leaning against the dawn.

you have bruised me
in faraway places: my peripheral
vision was never
as finely attuned.

askew with your thoughts—
leaning against my shoulder,
leaning against the dawn.

Here's a brief analysis of my own work...

We depend on that which is faraway—and we become cold for the wanting of it.

While you are physically "leaning against my shoulder", you feel to be leaning against the "dawn": leaning against something remote and faraway. That's what's hindering our relationship; we've lost our closeness.

That's why the hills are "sunken". That's why it's a "bunker", not a cottage or cabin.

Hence my injuries. Hence my lack of "peripheral vision": I could never quite make out what you were reaching for.

Rohan P Sep 2018

right/wrong

you circled the wrong
answer again
and again, the
led darkening into the paper
until there were no answers
left at all.

that's what i love about you.

Rohan P Sep 2018

like brushing an inch of snow off a windshield

we left behind
gated, frosting footsteps:

a pulsing night, pulling
in and out of colour:

you were an
outlined track on our
palms: a myriad of
our voices tangling
as rubber wires:

a crystal in our cloudless breath,
an art i couldn't limn.

you were brittle
and warm: i still

shivered as i brushed
your shoulder.

I think I realise something for the first time:

you're a person I've never met,
but whom I've seen a thousand times.

Rohan P Sep 2018

i didn't mean to leave you, but the clouds moved by so beautifully, and the birds—

red-breasted swallows chase
love on our
grave. She piles the earth, spoonful
by spoonful—

I see a torrent of brown
in her hair,
I see her dancing in the early
morning light.

i found something when we were apart.

#clouds #sunday #swallows