Neen.

And then the hills.

Back when we were walking in
Secret tracks, climbing stair upon stair
Searching for alternative paths,
We came upon an impasse.
Someone opened up a window and
In this version of the story,
There was a bird inside.
And in this version of the story,
The sky was turning orange in the middle of the day time.
In this version of the story, the bird whizzed
Past us, leaving behind a trail of feathers
And in this version of the story,
We had enough love to watch them.

In this version of the story,
We had enough patience to watch
Feathers falling gentler than snow,
And in this version of the story,
We had more, enough
to wait until the feathers could catch up with us
So that we could catch them.

In this version of the story, the bird burst into the sky
Until we didn't remember what colour it was-
Only that this strange bird turned into fire,
And disappeared, and
In this version of the story, the half-light was
Sufficient to see that no matter which way
We held up its feathers, they would reflect the sky:
As if we were given personal clouds for the times
We would not see them.
As if just by standing side by side,
We were staring at different birds,
Different skies.

As if,
That night when the bus was a beast,
Breaking against the ribcage of the traffic lights,
The feather would wound my collarbone,
Singing,
'Home, home, home.'
And the feather would tickle your collarbone,
Singing,
'No, no, no.'

In this version of the story,
The woman in the window
Would not tell us we were
'Going in the wrong way'
In this version of the story,
We'd stare at our feathers till
We realized that there is only one way
Before an impasse,
And it goes the same way
As a bird turning into the sky.

Which bird, which sky. 

Home Going

Today I was a crystal baby, ensconced in the white softness
Of frayed blankets, drunk with overuse, forming rivulets of white sand until I could
Only see black.

Mum came to me on the edges of her feet,
Dragging the weight of home-growing, home-making and home-shaping, and shook me awake
Physically, first, then spiritually, with
'It was easier when you were younger, you listened.'
'You were a quiet child, what happened now?'
Until I dragged her into testing the measure of crystal,
Asking her, for five minutes, to hold me before the ochre curtains
Were pulled away to the titters of a canary Sun.

The orange oven broke down a few years ago, and began gathering rust
... Actually, the rust was always there, in the basin of the thick au gratin,
But we put it off to taste, to having spent too long in the sun.
I like my au gratin like I like my boys- differently tasting, an odd kind of burnt:
Heat coming off from the basin as  symptoms of impending doom
The drum roll before the orchestra of baking death: fizz, crackle and boom.

I remember how heated and purple the evening skies were, flamingo pink from
The right angle.
The lone time I visited a circus, I expected the drama, opera, greek tragedies,
Unfurling into purple canvas.
I watched the clowns throw things, rise before plummeting, right before plummeting,
Turn the fear of the lion into laughter
Turn the fury of the bear into laughter
Turn the subsequent death of an emotion into laughter.
I thought trapeze artists were the hands of an overcharged clock,
Whirring to the haphazard music of circus tricks:
Fizz, crackle, boom.
I always imagined this drama unfurling in the backdrop of purple heat.
Instead, the light is ochre yellow in my room.

Today I was a crystal baby, shining up the dirty edges of rooms,
Asking for five more minutes in the soft measure of light,
Long after my Mum left, long after nobody was listening
Like I used to, when I was younger.

Today I was a crystal baby, sugar crystal peppering my mouth
When nobody was watching.

Gaps

I have been building light into the empty spaces
We do not impeach, like our intersecting umbras
Are strange light bulbs, not yellow ones;
Orange, red, blue.

I let all the light that fell on your face and transformed,
I let all the light that mimics your outline
Through the cream curtains,
Fall into the empty gaps for which
We don't have the ink to overwrite.

There is a war we're waging, between charge and stasis.
How long before we pull the negative space between us
And kill it?
How long before the negative space pushes away its edges
And kills us?

In my head last night, we were closing light,
Pulling the purse strings of our limbs tight,
Into each other
'Puzzle pieces,' I whispered,
Laughter, you responded, and I do not how to put it into quotations
-Even though that is more significant-
Because Laughter, an action is laughter, an action on paper
and how do I
Fill in the gap of its colour?

We need to find ourselves separate seas.

Remember the Atlas of our youth, who would carry
The Earth on his back?

Consult Atlas,
Consult the man anchored to the world.
Ask him about the Seas he carried, whose names he learnt
As Morse Code for escape.

Ask him the names of all the Seas,
have him tell you the names of the Seas
That new people named again and
And again
And again.

Ask Atlas whether it was an act of  conquering or conjuring,
That made the new people find new words for exploration
And casually cast it off into the sea.

Ask Atlas whether it was an act of movement or stasis
That made the new people say new words for
Desire, an emotion
Every time they were confronted by
The largest gap that they could find.

Gaia

In the larger picture, I'll always recommend sleep.

We were throwing rocks at cemented walls
Because that's what I felt like doing.
You asked me to leave my bag down, and pick up bricks
And throw them until one smashed loud enough
To make the buzzing in my head go out.

Back in 11th grade a boy I thought I liked pointed out the exact
Corner from the street he grew up in  
Where his friends and him were truly happy.  Sometimes I do not need you, I need your elbow, knees, bits of shirt
For the exact same reason.

We were hiding out, cops and robbers,
And going places you know and places I'm learning to know.
You knew them since you were younger and this was the edge of the street
As you knew it from your window
I know them since I'm older and I'm at the edge of the street
And long before I ever stood here
You looked out of the window to remember.

We were building stories, secret ones
'And if they ask'
'And should I tell'
'And does it really matter?'

I asked if I could buy lots of glass cups and smash them
And you said yes
I asked if you would stand in the sand and let
Ants walk over your feet for a photo you said yes
Yes I will yes I can no this isn't how you wanted it
I asked if it- if you know, I- really mattered
And you said yes.

Because she told me to not use qualifiers,
I imagined how to spell hate without making it sound so negative.
Miss, 'Yesterday, Thursday I thought of killing myself because
A. I wouldn't die
B. If I died, okay.
It's not that I don't appreciate that you value me
It's just that this is the wrong end of the equation,
I'm not trying to arrive at the x reasons you love me.
Miss, I'm just really trying to figure out y.'

Between two rocks, I asked you
What if okay meant I couldn't write again.
You told me writing was anything.
I told you in a flash, when the rock chipped the wall as a fullstop,
I thought of a poem:
'Sometimes, you need broken stones for the building.'
You smiled, knowing that isn't the poem.
I smiled because I knew you knew
That wasn't the poem.
The poem was the smash,
The deep breaths,
The sound of a bag being lifted off the pavement,
And hearing it break into rain.

I have a closet where everything is in place
And I have a key to the closet that I've lost twice in a row
One time my roommate told me it was under me
The second time it was where it was supposed to be
Only my roommate's gift of balloons was getting in the way.

Birdsong

Three days after I saw a passerine bird
I could not recognize
I sat frozen in the hot, hot floor
And watched the creases of my feet cave in
With three day old dust as proof
Of having spent time among the birds.

Today they asked me to spell green in the easiest way I know
So I built them an image:
'Imagine nothing.'
Today they asked me my favourite story from scripture
So I began with
'Imagine children.'
Today I typed passerine thrice and
All I know about the bird
Is dust.

How do you name birds
When all the words you know are borrowed?
How do you turn a sieve into
A container
If all you have taught it is to
Let go?
How do you name those  living interludes
That break against you too fast for you
To say more than a gasp and sputter
Before the next wave hits you and
You become a
Brown passerine bird with yellow beak
Cheek against sand,
Collecting dust.

In the hot, hot room where cats often come
To leave dusty paw prints,
I have learnt them by their paws and not their face
And sometimes the paws I call Nefertiti
Leaves drops of blood from a previous hunt
I wonder if I will know the passerine bird
If I see its blood.

I lie down on the floor,
Wondering that if dust can fly, can settle, can walk in
And take over everything you know,
If dust has learnt living.

Dust, can you hear me
Can you remember me
Would you know me
Would you want to know me from a
Passerine bird
Brown, yellow beaked. 

Gay Woman On the Opposite Seat

(For 12/6/2016)

Pink t shirt, boy cut, sunglasses on top 

Like fashion statements can sometimes overlap with
General sentiment
Like wearing pink is reinstating identity
And negating it
Like wearing pink is wearing white and wearing black
Which is to say is
good mourning.

The sunlight falls on your forearm in
Checkered patterns like it is reflecting
The physical bindings you are in
Like there is livewire around your wrist
Even when it isn't really
Like you are an animal trying to escape international borders
And the shadow of your past
Is the musky scent you can never rid get of

I've never been to a bar a pub a place
Never smelt the musky scent of hopeful sex
Heterosexual is kinda unsafe
I hope you know of seedy retreats
Train traveller on the street, The Street leading you to the sheets
After getting high on six shots of freedom and emancipation
And pink polo t-shirt coloured identity formation
I hope that tattoo peeking at me from beneath your sleeve
Develops eyes in safe homosexual company.

Men's watch, gold chain, are they family legacies?
Do your parents know?
If they shut you up in a pub
Would your parents know?
When your name comes in the papers tomorrow,
Is that the first time they'd know
That their daughter who kept low-key, shoved boys against the wall, looked at her breasts strangely
Died unhappy and gay?

Did you ever have to scream through shut doors
Creaking down with parental pressure
'Would you rather have me dead?'
Did you have to taste the floor more times than just that once
To keep your guts from spilling over?

Girl near the window seat,
You use the same shampoo as me
And have rough hands that carry its scent
Just like me.
Do you think when he was shooting them down
He could smell himself?

Ghost Towns

Walk around my room, my buildings of stacked away books

Don't trip and send the pile crashing
But if you do, the paperbacks will cushion you
Or if they don't at least
It wasn't sticks or stones
But words that broke your bones.

I'm laughing, right now
The coffee is hot, right now
It's in the kitchen, so it'll burn and spill before I reach out
But I'm surrounded by buildings
And I'm waiting for you to stand up so I can laugh and say,
'Godzilla'.

When we shut the lights and walk around
And watch our step to stop
Your Palahniuk from falling on my Ulysses
Your wrist reaching out for mine
Your car with its yellow pinprick eyes
Staring back even as we wish goodbye.

We're building ghost towns that no one outside us knows.

We have a secret language marked out in the nooks
Made by all the blocks of books
Tell me you're not a dancer and
We'll learn ballet
Tell me you don't walk barefoot
And I'll let your skin taste this marble valley.

Here is the blueprints on our palms
Of all the stories we've stolen from the buildings
Of how we built a world with words and
Then changed them in our head
And waited for when we're asleep, saying,
'They'll come back then.'

This is our ghost town
That we shelve out in half and half
For favourites, childhood-read,
Saving for our kids
Or when they invent technology for our dogs to read.

This is our ghost town
The one I'll pack and shut before anyone gets home
I'm not planning on leaving any evidence outside
The plans for what book is which brick
And which brick is for which building
And which one has love notes from a younger, older life
And which one is the one that's an allegory for you and I.