“To create is to live twice.” - Albert Camus
“I used to think the goal was to be loved. Now I know it’s to be understood.”
- Emma Thompson
We are kind to each other
The cooking utensil to the other
cooking utensils in the drawer
The spoon to the other spoons, yes, everything
must have its place, every trace
of prey, each invisible doorway
into the kitchen
What is courage,
what is increase? It is only a
place to start
The garden is cool,
the tree’s shade
My father’s voice
I murmur a response
The washing hangs on the line
My brother’s daughter strums
a toy guitar, we have a
butternut pizza for supper
We can’t get the boys out of the angry green sea,
nor can we get them out of the jacuzzi
The white gaze lies dormant
in the shade like our brown bodies
We put a plaster on her finger
the wound is bloodless now
I make iced matcha lattes for myself and my dad
I lick the white moustache off my upper lip
Overnight I have turned into a capitalist
My fingers into stars, my legs
into a wave, the bead of the presenter’s
tongue on the television into a fig
The current moves through me
This time it’s personal
It catches the light of the fire
inside my father, inside all of us
The smell of burning meat, drumsticks
The kitchen is time and memory
Legs are tanned, burned by the sun’s time and memory
The boys and my sister play a board game
My mother screams and screams at me
The room grows quiet
A pink geranium grows out of my mother’s throat
Something within me is crushed like a pill
Slowly the sun in my mother’s eyes
turns into a mocking face, a laugh
Its poison is killing me slowly. She is just a woman
and I am just a woman
The moment passes
The child starts to laugh too because my mother is laughing
I break, I break
A wave flows into me and I lose consciousness
It’s evening
The game continues
A woman walks by the house with her dog
The dog barks
There’s a white feather in my mouth
It tastes like snow
No comments:
Post a Comment