proving I am capable of constructing something, I’m reading Blue Nights, and listening to Jessica Pratt (I’m thinking of Back Baby and On Your Own Love Again)
a soft blanket passes by, shivered by the wind,
a soft blanket cradles you in
a past,
kisses for your salty lips, looking for home in the sea,
as the clouds darken, pitch
a canvas for the moon, she strings on,
in a loft,
she pulls you to the ground, circling your shoulders, making
you moan for the dark to take you nowhere, really,
and the sandman to come, for
them heavy feather lids,
forgotten to blink,
the way that girl never did her laces, fooling you
that perhaps laces were never meant to be tied,
pull down and open those eyes sweet now,
it’s too late
for those games and no wonder all is dust,
as you’re being waltzed through
every third step you thought you’d run back to, every
star you pocketed from your shining window, it’s funny,
isn’t it, it’s july, yet the balmy air only creaks an old chair’s spine, stretching
to read the sunday paper
window, open tight, eyes wide, papa by your bedside, you
begging him to stay, for the music to hypnotise, as it did you, and
every day was a fallen, shooting star, oh how we prettied life back then, how
we kicked death to the curb before we lost our immortality one may morning,
such promises grounded, in the hollow crust, maybe, but the ones who know,
those who hang up the truth in their backyard, less often the front, know
it’s worn out, but can still be worn, they know promises christened in
places like heaven, in baby fingers, they know what they never say,
even in the fridge they might not keep, even in plastic containment,
but they are made, made, in the bed where you are born, in the bed to die,
your baby fingers lay laced in curls stoned grey now, and
promises sure, as hipbones, sharp, clearer than air,
flickering in the candle, where a boy
once danced, whites glowing, and then there was a girl,
where do they run?
and now you wring your hands, cracked open
to spill, spaghetti down the drain, gone where the
tears don’t show,
where the blood might run, you feel lined in this baby soft
throw, like you’ve surfaced from life inside out, funny how water’s
reversible, only you know, and one day maybe she will,
where the stitches on frays won’t sew, where the strings are lost,
in holes, once you dressed up in the craziest, clothes,
but now nothing, nothing, goes,
held up to the glass, marked by a marble eye, nothing can go, not even the
black dress that makes you cry at night, somewhere you long jumped over,
how rash, how sane you once were, living like
tomorrows were endless rainbow gold, promised
like Dawn, like they said, even under grey sky,
but it’s all gone, gone in the morning, gone tomorrow night,
did you slip under the bathroom mat, did you lose time
when you were stuck in a dirty mirror, trying to brush your teeth?
fresh laundry, churned, piled in drabs,
making patches, ones
you swore you knew better than to mend when they first crept up hello,
emptied in grazes running for trains that never came, on time, throwing
their senses along pavements rolled over in tarmac, over and over,
beaming new,
get up, child, get
going, in these shoes, not new, not limping,
this is the big pearl necklace from mum’s basket that fits, in
a frailness you grow
