you fill me
so completely,
your tongue, your speech, your fingers
go swimming in my veins.
you make me feel
so deeply
i taste the ocean every night,
the patterns of its seashells
still pressed into my palms
when i fumble for words in the morning.
i blossom like an orchid,
rare and podshaped,
strangely preeminent
under your gaze.
an open womb inside a girl’s young frame,
aflame.
you are the love
of this life,
of this night
and the next.
think of home for me, will you? hear the kettle boiling in the background, lone wolf howling in the night; the crockery clattering like crickets chirping; the steaming mug of coffee turning whiter still with every drop of milk.
remember the beige carpets, the perilous stairs, the strange creaking under floorboards: my parents’ house. or nobody’s house. a piece of rented haven.
but it was home. and d’you remember the first time we made out on the sofa in the living room downstairs? the day after i turned single and we couldn’t wait much longer? the irony of that day was not lost on me. how could it be? the impact on the window smashing is not forgotten by the frame: the memory is always there – gentle pulpitations in the soft grooves of the wood.
you see, beginnings shape the world.
quietly, carefully, they smooth the edges, polish outer surfaces, let us glean a little of the inside. they are a little mirror straight into the lover’s heart, a sphere held between the middle finger and the thumb, a kite.
it’s the beginning that lets me know where home is: with my hands on your neck; with your head on my lap.
had i taken my art seriously, i would have been a different person. i would have made everything from scratch: from scabs and paper, empty cans; empty windows, empty lives and baskets full of nothing but dew and pegs.
i’d hang it all right there - on the lamppost straining under the weight of its shaky light. an archeologist of tomorrow, or an architect of the past;- i’d dig up glass, giddy with youth and life and the rush of blood pounding through the vena cava and into the heart. i’d pour water from a hose straight into the vase and leave the vase like that, without flowers, only the water, to reflect the brilliant shine of light.
at times i think about that, charting my life as if i painted for a living, as if i put my life on canvas in short brittle lines. at others, i get this image, clear as day, of apples bobbing on the surface of the water, rippling out. and then i think of god.
where is he now; and does he really listen? presumptious questions often come in pairs, i find.
sometimes i lay and listen to the silence and i can almost feel it, feel him, her, them: this overpowering presence of beauty, knowledge, loss, virility and life.
but almost. only almost.
and then it’s gone, as if it were never there.
i try to live by the rules. the fornication one, that one, it almost gets me. and there it is again: almost.
isn’t the world full of them, like butterflies, circling in pallid curves across the faltering sky? think long and hard and you start to hear them: a sweet low buzzing hum. and if i were an artist, i’d paint it as a sun.
we could eat oysters
under the moonlit sky
and nothing would change
except, perhaps, the taste in your mouth.
how many calls have you missed
¿y cuandos calles anduve contigo
como si estuve solo?
your touch would have been enough
if it weren’t for the look in your eyes.
and i guess that’s just it.
that’s just fine.
one day i will cry the mud out of mine.
today is splashing,
brimming
in my head.
the world a puddle,
i turn to you instead:
your stolid torso
solid in my hands.
[breathe for relief]
a pause.
caesura.
shutting eyes,
tomorrow nears
to the tip of the tongue:
silk sashaying,
spices pungent with plans,
sweetpea undertones
simmering with the pink
of young girls’ dreams.
but
i dreamt
i dream in yellow.
hands refuse to let go off your waist.
tighter. tighter. i can almost breathe you in.
and then release.
we fall asleep like that.
