asleep at the wheel

i had a dream last night that i fell asleep at the wheel and still arrived soundly at my destination.

i wake now feeling as though there is something important to remember.

maybe in the words. perhaps in the sentiment.

the way things look when my eyes (finally) adjust. the time it takes to trace. white. toes for balance. the reply.

because now there is seldom cause for movement. not even a hand to brush my hair aside. because it will pass. the need. the desire. the will.

i will wake when i arrive.

and the rest you already know firsthand.

absence minded

i have always been so preoccupied with all the things i have left behind.

so i drag them around with me.

i take you out, i take you home.

it is true that i picture you exactly as i left you - bearded and smudged like a memory aged and too well worn.

now each detail you provide in letters i imagine you writing to me from the branches of swaying trees alters you momentarily, and then reverts you to the original image i have of you under high frescoed ceilings i believed i could reach.

you take me more than three hours of knowing, and years since of not knowing.

endless hours at my north-facing window, and now at my desk. you are here with me and thousands of miles away, a franked postage stamp - historical and expired.

Something Nice For Me

You teach me to go
out of my way for people,
you go out of yours
for me. A kindness
like the rim of a glass,
or the edge of a biscuit-
a lake I bend over and kiss
with an open mouth. I roll
my tongue around your
simple gestures endlessly
hoping they will never end.

There are fishermen
watching you go ahead
to prepare for my arrival.
They notice my child-sized
footprints retrace, bury
and sink into yours - though
I am not too far behind.

They see things we do not,
just below the surface.

Love Letter

I study my hand
still on the paper, and resting
in a way I find foreign.
It is hard to look
at your own things
as unfamiliar.

Nothing makes me panic
like old love revisited.
In a dream he enters
again, making me
believe we are good.
This time we are good.

But reasons will betray you
when you turn your back,
will make you find
the strangest things nostalgic
and weighing a heavy cough
on your chest.

Like an angle these things appear
changed and new and
at times unrecognisable,
until they move from the page
to remind you.

emily after

i don't regret not being able to applaud.

i stood at the back in the dark trying to love every moment, but came up empty, gasping for air.

and it could not have been more different from being inside a song you want to be stuck inside.

in my mind i was breaking dishes. and telling you how i was trying.

i was trying. i was trying.

and i thought i heard you tell me that there are some things you enjoy at the time, and savour as you devour. but then there are those things that you leave for a later you.

to come home to, to come in to. in a room full of no-one else.

it is more and less like that.

it's not the photo...

so much as the memory of that time.

it was about two years ago surely... no not quite... i hadn't even reached poland by that time.

had you?

everything feels so long ago - even age is an indeterminate measure for a state in which i feel myself passing from the instant i arrive.

by and by i come.

i laugh in loops and the original sounds like an echo. as though the present is so fleeting it must be reminded of its actions. it comes back to me in circles. in shallow afterthoughts - that i am happy because i hear my laugh.

twice i have thought so.

anonymous flowers

the trouble is, the number of times i can ask who sent them to me is finite.

"did you send me the flowers?"

"by the way, did you... courier me a bunch of almost-open tulips?"

yes i was called to reception to collect them, yes i left them there an hour after i'd been told they were there, yes they were more magnificent than i'd hoped or imagined.

but i don't want to carry this question with me.

not even for an hour.

so thank you, i am sure you want me to feel special and curious.

but if i could, i'd return to sender.

address unknown.

i am not waiting for anyone else to arrive

i woke up so many times in the night and this morning that i scarcely remember ever sleeping. even in my dreams i would wake up again and again. sometimes to the alarm sounding, and then to feel the wind on my face and the curtains rustling. each time i would see you moving boxes. like an escher print in HB lead, you moving in unending circles. like tetris or mario to the boxes falling as quickly as you move them. each box you unpack sending you packing.

this is how i came to realise you are going. and maybe this is in fact the change. it is not a newfound maturity at all. quite the opposite. it makes me want to go back to bed.

and i blame the boxes, all boxes. the tupperware and empty ice-cream containers. fuck all storage.

if only i could have confined my love to just one of these empty spaces.

over the ocean

i love the window seat.
i don't care if it is dark outside and i can see only my reflection.
i love to know i am closer to the other side of the double sheets of glass.
i love to pretend to sleep up against it.
to marvel at the wings and the toothpick-like protuberances keeping us air-bound.
i love to avoid the traffic up and down the aisles.
i love to study the water from a great height.
to feel the cool glass against my cabin-controlled skin.
but i will give you the window seat if you will fly with me.

what of the water?

recently i heard a tale that made me laugh and gasp for air just like that dream
so vivid i was a fish swimming upstream
i got confused so suddenly it seemed
and forgot that i had gills and i could breathe
so faint, so full, so foolish

his love found her

she read and re-read his love. she savoured it so that she refused to swallow, determined not to allow the flavour to pass or change.

and she has known real friendships. those that have endured she likes to take for granted, like smiling, no more like laughter. and those that ended on days not unlike today, still preoccupy her . not with any sense of regret or guilt, but curiosity as to why these friendships persisted to float or sink but refused to do both in equal measure.

she found him just below the surface.

oh, and she has known love. yes loves of every vintage. she has hidden some and framed others, and revealed her loves through reluctant tinges of red.

though she had never loved from so far away. and now she is convinced that she sees him at night. below the surface, he is hanging upside-down, free to let the love fall like loose change from his pockets.

i may not...

even be awake right now.

i played a show with liam finn (from new zealand) last night. neil's son, and one of my first boyfriend's namesake - the liam part i mean.

i was unusually calm on stage and felt my whole set unravel around me as though i was the gig rather than being only part of it. typically i perform in disjointed parts, too distracted to ever remove myself entirely from my surroundings.

happy is a girl who gets lost in song.

sleep didn't come easily afterwards and never really came, as though it might erase the memory of the gig, as waking does a dream.

and it was a dream, and one that i'll remember.

hospital gown

The trees have less colour,
not more, against the ashen sky.
We troop to the hospital
in holy twos or alone, as I am
this morning on foot, to administer
cold kisses to the north,
south, east, and west of your face.

You are so graceful
even in decay, your gown
a perfect canvas for the waltz
of visitors announced
by the gifts they bring in
and out, in and out—
my breath adds life this morning
to an otherwise motionless street.

i am glad this winter...

i resumed blogging.

today i hit a speed hump in the process of writing a piece about a boy born during the chinese year of the snake - my symbol too. i was stuck trying to think of the collective noun for a group of snakes.

i hoped it would be a murder, but thought it should be a pride.

a pride of mothers, that would be nice too.

now i sit on the hump thinking i'd almost prefer not to know. in case i am disappointed by the truth.

-----

p.s. a bed of snakes, a den of snakes, a nest of snakes, a pit of snakes, a slither of snakes

*sob*

march twenty

you know the way i am now. the piscean swimming in two directions. what i tell you, and what i plan not to-

but do anyway.

i tell you i will see you tomorrow. will collect you if you'd like, or see you later if you'd rather.

i won't tell you i don't know how to will things back. that when i try i squint my eyes closed hard and hope. the same way i make a wish. more so it is the way i pretend it isn't happening.

i won't tell you i don't know how to let go. that i can't scoop the dead ones from the surface. that i leave them be.

i squint and i rock and i see my body in the sediment, rising.

but i tell myself everything. that i hold things close when i try to let them go. that i lose my way even when i'm paying close attention.

because i am the only one present all the time.

i watch myself from afar, and then up close if i am careful. i see myself parade and excite, goose it up and water it down. and keep hope even when part of me has given up and in.

it is powerful, it is naive. mostly it is anything i want it to be. because i know as much as i tell myself i do, and i will fill in the gaps otherwise.

and i'll be there counting no doubt, or marking it down as a day to remember.

i would tell you

though i would tell you
of my life, love, and loss
my voice trails off
"i was a good wife, i loved him"
but just as the morning wipes clean
any hint of even the most recent dream
i may not have said a word
as none was heard it seems
my tongue now slow and numb
heavy and makes my speech clumsy
"they were good times, we meant them"
there was no need nor thought to invent them

hopelessly lovely

i am forever accusing one of my older sisters of being a hippy. she has this summer-fruit-peachy-glow approach to things. it is actually something i love about her (but don't tell her i said so). her hippydom has now become a running joke between us.

she tells me that she has started taking fish oil, she tells me she believes everyone is a reflection of everyone else, she tells me she is moving to the country. i call her a hippy.

just now i had an encounter with a man who went out of his way to be lovely. just some simple things that made me smile and smile.

and somehow that made me feel closer to my sister.

patience

is a flightless bird.

i thought to myself today as i stood in a queue for a mango smoothie wearing gloves, scarf, and beanie. not quite extinct, but definitely grounded.

being colder in the cold made complete sense today. like being completely satisfied with being asked a question in response to your own question.

who am i to deny myself my own cravings?

don't answer that.