Tweet-atweet-atweet
chirpchew, tweettweettweet, chirp, twittertoo
sqeeeez, twittwit, cheep, atweet
chirp, aacoocoocoo, hoothoothoot, chirpchirpcheeou,
scraaaaaaaaacawcaw
Seeds, seeds, seeds
Cat, danger, cat, cat, fly away
Worms, bugs, eat, do like me
I am embarrassed by my dissection of the sandwich. My fingers pick away at it, clumsily pulling apart the various parts, like some inexpert surgeon.
Why did they have to put onions in it? Is nothing sacred?
Outside the window someone who looks a bit like someone I know walks by.
I continue my open-heart sandwich surgery, easing open the bread skeleton, pulling apart the strands of cheesy yellow flesh, prodding around the tomato red blood cells.
Sitting in my room
incense burning in the living space.
Unsettled here, on the edge of Spring.
Today marks Oestara, the Vernal Equinox where I reside.
It’s 9:22pm; already one foot deeper into Spring than the Winter
And I’m having a very difficult time stepping out of my Dark Beautiful Season.
This Winter has been long and deep.
Entering it with a distracted head, focusing on the holidays and festivities—
the novelty of the seasons.
When January edged on and February came,
I was truly finding my Self in the Depths of Darkness.
Consumed by the cold Void as the days were mostly consumed by the Moonlit eve.
Although I first met this with resistance, I’ve grown comfortable here.
Not complacent or at ease, but profoundly at Home
in this fiery Underworld.
Ages ago she danced among
The joyous grey blue ocean waves
Not ever knowing she was wrong
to dance where danger lay
They watched her with eyes lit like dark flames
“you are standing in a terracotta city. A mermaid appears and hands you an essay”
I am not washed up but dried out,
on this baked dry plain.
The earth cracked beneath my feet,
my feet cracked beneath my limbs,
my limbs cracked beneath a body craving water.
1
Age seven or eight, I receive my first public library card of
hard, green plastic with black letters emblazoned across it and
I look at no other words apart from these precious two:
Book Token.
I wobble up and down the streets between my house
and the mobile library, perched like a mirage
between roaring cars and the curly slide I stand atop for hours,
unsure if I am brave enough to hurl myself down.
I fall in love with haunted neighbourhoods
with empty houses
devoid of living but evanescent photographs
stand witness to a time when
the bed wasn’t so empty
with roads that have no cars fluttering by
Heavy is the frame that wears the gown,
runs the mantra through your head
as you slough off your armour of blue PPE gear,
run a shower – though the source of water
isn’t only from above.
Cue repeated scrubbing of hands
to cleanse the multitude of horrors
you can never quite escape.
Wolves hunt for the moon-touched lovers,
dazzled by the dark, with stars in their eyes
that mask the gleam of hungry teeth, and claws
trailing closer,
closer.
Wolves encircle bright young bodies
dizzied in orbit, their newly burst hearts
left open; nebulous scent drifting
into a vast
(and greedy)
night.