I'm 'sophisticatedly' sticking a pen
in my mouth, pretending
to smoke a cigarette.
I don't have the courage to hurt
myself, but
I do.
In 'subtle and implied' ways, he
says.

I make watery coffee and convince
myself, my happiness
lies in there,
floating. And I pretend
I'm in a Parisian cafe.
But these are pipe-dream dregs,
nothing else.
I guess they can't substitute the
vividness of being,
living.
Of sharp technicolour experience that can be
smelt.
Dregs, indeed.

Today, I borrowed Birthday Letters by
Ted Hughes from the library.
I'm wondering if
salvias were his favourite
flower.
His favourite.
I can't figure it out.
For his words are only stricken,
messy with the rawness of
too-technicolour experience.
Beautiful.
But sharp
enough to pierce and
poison,
like Paris.
My Paris, your Paris,
our little Paris.
So startlingly, breathlessly
red.

I suddenly know why I have written this.
The colour of salvias,
of Paris,
of me and you,
is my soul's favourite.
His favourite.
And salvias, their fragrance, it
douses the fire that's threatening to
suffocate, swallow my
life whole,
incomplete.

Red is my favourite colour.
And it's yours.

But I really don't think I want it to be.

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden.

before she was death I
often saw her in the orchard with
her pet ducks and fluttery dress
when ancient pear trees abandoned their leaves
she’d pick the weakest and tie them to her hat
collect the newest, give them to the river
the longest, she’d knit into baskets and matts
gift them to old maidens and lonely men

and the rest, she fed to the flowers

and I know that before she was death
she loved flowers but she
never plucked them
she waited for their mothers to let go,
then she’d take the cadavers home
and make beauty out of them

before she was death, she liked
to talk to the graveyard at night
dark wasn’t ugly to her,
and silence was only the trees talking

now, night lives in her obsolete house
when sun goes down, he likes to come out and
pluck stars off skinny bushes
her brightly painted walls are old lattice leaves
behind, the mountains laugh
and beneath them, a kingdom flourishes
not like corn fields near the bank,
a dust-storm, or a mistletoe

and no one talks of where she went though
the talk goes everywhere—

but I know she too feared lone woods
and moonless skies
she saw beauty in all, but nothing
sweet in the softness of flesh

and I know she despised the old cave
behind her house, for it was where she went

her crown is beautified with scared salvias,
petunias tremble at her name, and
daffodils don't even speak, and I
know I don’t want to take her place
so don’t offer me these pretty tiaras
and silence is so much more than trees talking

and some plants like to crawl up on others
**** the life and spit it out on the dirt but I’d
rather be towed down by those furious winds

and meddle not with me or my blood
I could show a softer way in—

like how her blades cut through grey grass
and how her fingers twisted to tie them strands to sheets
and meddle not with me or my blood
I could show a faster way out—
how the leaves bid goodbye as they glided
away with the waters; how her paintbrushes
emerged, soaking, out those liquids
and how she painted poetry out of dust

meddle not with me or my blood

she, who moulded the ground
into toys and pots, taught me
to befriend the daggers, and trust them
taught me how stinking corpses were better
than scentless lilies—and fanged
wolves were often what willed the sheep to live

before she was death she
used to sing a ballad unusual,
'I do not wish to take your place on that
throne, dear death,
I’d rather rot in your prison cells'

but death has not time for pleas.

Homeless, you
remained on the
wrong side of moon.

Trying to steal
yourself from light.

Now money speaks,
undoing Fabian formula.

Why one should exit
from the cabal of choosers?
Your infirmity will
sink you in wet sands.

When salvias were blooming,
you wanted to become
an accomplice of a sage.
Killing without crime.

Sometimes you fill
your life with meaningless words.
A trivia of hurting others.