I remember something similar to nests
The sounds of things repeating
In various places. Chandeliers
Too removed to be actual.
My innermost thoughts the lightest
Of all known elements, I remember,
My hollow-cheeked voice reciting
From memory. I remember our temples.
How they will never fluoresce
With that immense white light.
There is a slice of summer in my chest
Where there is a tree just for reading
And greens and greens and greens.

Locks of your hair like ghost orchids
Rare — How they grow in the dark

Like you grew. And what if my voice takes
11 years to flower? What if our meeting

Is like a milk carton decomposing? Or like
The the longest migration? My sharp

Piercing lung. Are you long gone?
One day I will be soft as the insides

Of your arms, where I would lay, like
A milk drunk babe, wishing on moles like stars.

Exile was a haunting in the earliest mud,
A bellow of night jasmine on a wreckage

Of returns. We came from the kiln cool
To the touch. Now our faults blight our faces,

Like summers, like salt-hay. I will not tell you
Which ways your many voices moved me.

I will not tell you the summits I scaled
Now that I speak your tongue.

While the animals tremble,
                               stay with me.

I’ve heard them speak of this day

As I lay on lily-pads the colour of Eden.

Don’t put on that cloak.
                                    It’s not yet time.

First, I’ll bring you three-halves pear and pomelo.

We’ll watch the grenadine smoke blow
                                                    Across the pewter skies.

Don’t let’s sleep and think we dreamt this.

Stay with me and watch it burn
                                                     Let our pupils dilate.
Our hearts will save us
                              My heart.

Forgive me. There are things beyond quantities, things
I feel in the flush of my face. A rhythm to my breath.
An arrest of senses traipsing here and there.
A ragbag of memories, superstitions
Behind lips and lids, other shutterings
And listen! — We are fragile with smaller things.
Pomegranates, plucked loose. Our seeds
Scattered with a tap. Existence, broody
Disrobed of its leathery skin,
We bleed through the impossible pulp to speak
Salvation: Brand new with tags.

Glittering with a thesaurus
Of allergies. I wear my morning jacket
Like a shroud. On the riverbanks
I sense graveyards and cities
They are hunter. Despite the birdsong
And my fear gleams on my earlobes
Like surrender.

The first, unlike any living flower
Arranged in layered whorls of three
And world is music, mirrors, malaise.

We wander, naked In our clothes
They press up against us, we stiffen
Our devil hearts beat faster and faster.

We wish ourselves into the graves of strangers
We talk to animals, a retort of earthquakes
Thunder, smoke for forty days.

Do they know? Our flesh and bones testify
To each sinking of the earth
An atom of faith, the eye of a needle.

I am only nine. And a child's tongue
Must be good. And I should not be at the mercy
Of the fourth sky. Or this man.
Or that.