I stole a sheet from the test papers
For my hands are filled
Already with ink
from exhausted pens
Well, that is all I planned to say
But I must keep on this ramble
Only these words feel real
Only they keep me warm

Sun dies gently behind the clouds
And gossips scatter around
Girls in blacks
And yellows and reds
Scarves dyed in greens, browns
And blues
Intricate galaxies stitched
On their swaying tunics

I do not dissolve here
In these beautiful tides
and their slow dance
Not with a carnage stuck in my chest
Not with the bleached dawns
Rising and rising restless
And we’re all fighting, yes, we all are
Why then
Is this field so lonely?
Not a mourning, not a deafening blast
Is heard

A barricade of silence
I wrap around us
Us, I,
The boy
who constantly yells for freedom
And the girl
Who will let him not

Then again, us
I, the two children inside
One weaves a step out of his fingers
Other hops on
Peeps out of my eyes—
“Do they want me yet?”
“No”
“You, then?”
“No”
What then is wanted,
They wonder
But do not say—

It is an ungrateful inquiry
All luxuries they have known in this house
Crowns and swords, dresses, blooms
None kept from either
Why must
Then they want out?

Then the guys pass by
The scarce colours
that fill up their clothes
And hoarse laughs erupting
Their uncovered heads
And princely gaits

I belong there,
No more than here.
Not in flowers, not in bees
Do I blend
Not in capes, nor veils

No weapon I wish to hold,
Not an anklet studded with gold

In the grass, I cross my legs
Far from beetles
Far from wasps—
I watch red ants crawl up my shoes
Crush them, I do,
Casually beneath my fingers
One, then, three and more
Until dusk is silenced
by the night

Not a beetle approaches
Near
I wear the shimmering skin of a wasp
Not a wasp calls
I am skin only

Later,
The black sky comes
And takes us far.
The girl climbs up my spine
And pulls the boy along
They zip me open
And crawl out
Sit next to me, and they sing a song

I am the castle
Who could not help them live
I am the rusty duel
They were born to fight
Yet love me still, they do

And the crescent—
It is a woman nor a man
A crescent it is,
a crescent, stays

And when darkness comes
And eats the world
We join our hands
And build a softer one
But what good—

It is too dark to write now.
The lights flicker like stars
with smoke sickened
They pound in my head, pound and pound.
I hope the ramble
Was worth the theft