Human Valentines

I think of things to write and they slide off before I burn them permanent I wish I’d learn. I am craving an outpour today a real wave of it. Seb is here we drank in my room and the mirror was moved it changed everything I knew. We are obsessed with conventional things and we flourish in it. We flower and bloom. Top-tail with feet sticking out from wrapped doona I am waiting to use the bathroom again. My jeans press against my bladder in a way that ruins my whole world god I’m dramatic today. It is the second day and also the second last day, of a thing, like a colour. Pinching muscles to try and relax, trying trying so hard. Waking up before dawn every morning and rolling rolling I get a lot of thinking done in this state of sleepless fatigue, our brain thoughts next to one another’s feet and the beginning of another day. Love is in the doing, we make things so we can feel.

putting one foot in front of the other, over and over again

I ask her sheepishly if she thinks it’s a bad idea for me to get yet another coffee and she shrugs theatrically and says it’s before midday so go for broke – later at the produce market we sit on wicker chairs under a blanket and watch dogs walk past, her dog was poisoned when she was young and the cruelness in the world sinks its teeth into me like frostbite. The rain comes down and I’m almost thankful, the longest summer of my life is liquidating and now I can crawl into bed where I am most days anyhow and rest these aching bones for a season.

In bed, stoned and eating chips, we say with serious faces that one thing we will for sure miss about Berlin is Spree Quell (extra fizzy mineral water) - 12 empty bottles standing side by side like commuters in an elevator, I keep meaning to take them to the recycling. It’s funny, how moody I am, and I keep cutting things out of my diet to try and regulate whatever’s going on in my body and it’s one of those things you're never sure is really working, a bit like God or fish oil tablets. Are you having a wild time over there? Actually it’s all about herbal teas and soda water. It’s colder at nights now and I hobble around my studio in blankets, there’s a heater but I don’t know how to work it and no one’s around to ask. Creaky bones and sleeps filled to the brim with dreams, I dream of zoe a lot and seb thinks that means she also dreams about me, too. 

We were all glowing that night, with newness and full hearts and the extra spark delivered on his horizontal mirror. And we were glowing still the weekend earlier, smashing glasses in the fancy bar through the stupor of our foggy brains and we were glowing in the park, all lit up with the exciting plan of doing absolutely nothing but going back to bed and watching one tree hill. The new moon wants to bring a sense of ease to my relationship with my body, I try to let it, but “I am complete as I am” is a tricky phrase that clags up my internal room. What does slowing down look like? I try to change my gut response – that is looks bad, that it looks slovenly. I’m a triple fire what can I do.

Turning the corner I find you all huddled on a stoop, on the wrong side of the city and we laugh with our wild hearts. We breathe energy into the evening even though our reserves are low, and but we give it like a gift ‘cause sometimes that’s what support looks like.

Breakfast in the waiting room between my mind and yours

Through the wall you imagine her weighing

on your leafy arms and I understand

why you’d want to sedate yourself, and crawl out

in the morning                    shuffle back late at night

why you’d lose pieces of yourself in sugary bowls of cereal

over which                            the truth is constantly avoided

why you’d avoid

the stoned dead stare, eyes fixed through smoke

                                                                        on what? the past

you have dragged yourself across mind frames of prickling thought

and questioned the fabric of your reality

you’ve locked parts of you away that have hardly seen existence

that have only been trodden on, your heart, an obvious one

                                                      I think I saw it once

                                                      and I understand

                                                      the desire to keep some doors locked

in the blackest evenings it’s a task to even

summon anger, let me help you

I have enough to share

in the blackest evenings you have kept yourself alight(alive)

and I know you often don’t want to

your brain’s pillars go on holding while your pride

retreats like winter

you reach within yourself

and pull out broken furniture

there are lessons here, take them with you

                                                      take them in

                                                      to your soft heart, cold, and life-affirming.

                                                  

Waves.

I wished I could unlatch his body from the prison

it had made of itself, later

a salty tear makes a claggy mess of his words and

something reaches from within that moment of vulnerability (a hand, crooked)

                  I wish I could take you with me

                  to the parallel universe where I live, right next to you

                  all the time (without suffering)

at least we both are sure that we exist right now, I think

it was the year she began to look for answers

in her own body, the mesh of hair trapped in spoke of hairbrush

she asks for directions in her forearm freckles

we were born equipped with maps

we have no idea how to read

she asks if she is deserving of this worthlessness

I say — no — I don’t know — I mean I know some things

like you are methodical and stable, and that is a good thing

you can walk long journeys with strong legs

you are assertive in the closed door faces of powerful men

and you

don’t need to raise your voice for everyone to listen

and to me, you are worth a great deal

I was born from your body and when you move

I am reminded of the salt that licks and tumbles

under the skin of waves

the salt that keeps us all from drowning.

Lighthouse

Last night, the dream of them sitting

at the foot of my bed

with that giant light bulb skull

                                    ‘oh — I forgot your brain could glow,’ I said

through the thick glaze of sleep, hands extended

                                    towards the places where light escaped from

                                                      tear duct, ear drum, nostril, gap of tooth

for a doubtful second I thought they’d recoil, but they offered

their skull toward me and I knew our trust was intact

I noticed our cheeks bore tracks of shiny hot tears,

I realised we weren’t in our usual dimension, but we

lived here now and I couldn’t have been be happier

out in the real world, where my feet touch a solid ground

and your skull glows quieter, softly, maybe only I can see it —

                                    I dare to roll under your hot skin and wander

                                    through your garden of anxious thought

I let your intricacies swamp my very existence                  (and despite

                                                                                                                              the emblazoned performance

                                                                                                                              of my independence)

                                                                                                            I wander into dreams with you and

                                                                                                            devour your breath and light.

I howl like a coyote over morning coffee and your hands

lovingly find my jugular in the dark

again and again

who wrote this chapter of our lives? why

did they endow me with such qualities as manic reading,

disturbed sleeping, heavy drinking

why

are you equipped to move through intimacy so unscathed and why

does your head glow at night — is it a lighthouse, beckoning, safe

or a warning sign  — ‘turn back

trust in the real, the daily, trust the solid and the durable

trust not what keeps you up at night.’

but what do I know.

‘you don’t have to be so good to me,’ you say

and we grin at each other like old conspirators, like partners in crime, like

my devotion is a running joke, and I laugh

because I know I don’t have to

                                                      that maybe I’d be better off to seal up the wound

                                                      that bears your name

                                                      but what’s good for us is boring and we

all see only what we want to

and when your head glows

from between my hands

in the laptop light of evening                        I see you as a lighthouse