There’s a sense of her, an echo, in the curve of your mouth when you say certain things or see your father turn, his face so open and like your own but not enough of him in it to hide the sense of her, the echo ringing from your tongue.
When finally the foot stuck in ‘was’ escapes the mud and plants itself in becoming there is a second of achievement, of fanfare flooding out yesterday’s shortcomings. Until ‘becoming’ equals ‘was’ due to the addition of the second and subtraction of the first. Already there is the pull of yet another step half taken already and calling.
Someone says ‘look how dark it is, how black’ to a sky mottled by streetlights almost navy blue with the singing of bulbs whistling away shadows, their footprints of fake dawn greying the corners of this bedroom so the only true night is behind lids of clamped tight eyes wishing I could say ‘looking how dark it is, look how black and thick this night sits now the hours have turned to quiet.
Each man’s home is his castle, so I made mine a fortress, my sitting room a keep, and a battlement of books to stand watch for invaders wielding words like realistic, while I was carving hope into a portcullis, certain these walls could hold.
How even when we whispered it there was someone shushing our small mouths with calloused fingers. Pressing the words back inside as if they were Ouranos horror struck but what we birthed in those terrible, unspeakable words. Filling our bellies with ideas we were not allowed to give life to. Until we burst from the ineffable and held it screaming before their faces. Made them look at what we’d made.
Stung between garden fences twilight coaxed you outside, to the square of wilding lawn uncut from summer’s end, the coils of wood smoke streaked with petrol rising above an evening glow of light behind closed panes as one by one they too flickered out.
Slipping I slipped deeper on every word you spoke, caught up in the letters like giants and their fingers pinioned and pyloned at the edges of my reason, they made a fence around my certainty. Territorial of territory you deemed dangerous you became guard dog reversed. All teeth and snarl when I made to leave. Or maybe that was me biting the hand at my collar…
Aurora seeker sits knees folded, like a paperclip, and hands loose on the dirt at the edge of this cliff that has held others that watched for dawn.
Always pointed in words and pose. Perfect poise, perfect response, perfect timing. Held yourself above the rest of us. My own feet too leaden. My words dropped like iron anchors through deck and hull. Took the ship down with me. You reached or so I thought when I grasped for your hand. You were simply gesturing to the view beyond.
You. It’s burnt into my memory that open mouthed gape swallowing my words, and the back turned mid-sentence on an answer to a question you had asked only for the slow spin, arm triangled over your head as you scratched your scalp, and those frown scrunched nostrils somehow still flared in a state of confusion when I refused to speak to a man not facing me.
