The Corner of the World

 

 


 

It howls and no one hears, none think to find an app

to turn the wails, the whispers
                     into human words
     that we might comprehend.
Not that it matters. The wind has
naught to say,
not to us.
--

If I let you go, how far would the wind take you before pity made it let you loose?
--

Jacarandas clack clack clack on the pavement.
A hunched over form beside the over-arching entry way
shivered.
I worried, hurried closer. What if she was hurt?
She must be cold. It's pouring.
Closer.
Calling out.
The patio umbrella, ten feet from its tipped-over table,
doesn't answer me.
--

I find myself
singing in the dark.
when stillness palls the night, I sing.
Echoes
of songs I used to love,
of poems I heard long ago
but don't remember any more.
But still I sing.
I still find myself
singing.
Are these songs
I don't recall who I am?
--

Sensation overrides reality
doused in ice-cold
  water   wind   hate
I can't get warm.
Rivulets of anger drip down my face,
  blinding  shaking  shivering
The told me rage was fire-hot. Like fresh-spilled blood,
  blinding as it drips past your eyes, dizzy with pain.
I can't get warm.
The bed is empty.
You're not coming back.
--

I had a dream that was a book, or a film. I can't recall which.
I was in it: another character bound in ink and chemicals.
And it was reality. 

I had a dream about a story I was in.
A nightmare. Stories aren't like that.
Stories are filled with dragons and warfare and things left behind.
Princesses. Discoveries. New found love. My dream had these.
But stories end.

A book with all the pages turned, the back bind closed shut,
placed back on the shelf where dust collects, cannot be maudlin.
It cannot make us bleed from that shelf, contains power but no reach.
Its only hands are made of echoes.

In my dream, it didn't end. I woke up dreaming.
---


I told you not to run away. You did anyhow. Bitch.
I didn't mean that. I love you. It's just...
It's only for tomorrow, and now you're listening and looking
at me like we're still young, like we're still dancing.
Three girls our year wore tuxes to prom.
You're looking at me and you're a photograph.
---

They told me it'd be funny. They said you'd be okay.
It feels like my fault that I believed them; that they lied.
Questions echoing, the air rancid with the bittersweet regret of what was lost.
Apologies reverberate, bounce back and forth, like it's
some kid's game of hot potatoes and the music's getting fast.

Dream me back to that landscape, the sweet memoria we once knew.
Tell me all you see--make it feel real. Even the melting faces, the
grotesque caricatures of the people I don't remember awake. I
can't bear to miss them; to dream them and not see.

I can give you anything, he said. I'm magic. But the lilt of
his grin wasn't comic--wasn't jesting. I'm magic. If only you knew.
Give me normalicy. Give me you. The sad smile should have clued me in,
tipped me off. But he said only, "That isn't a word, dumbo."

A dream of pipes--the kind that weave and interlock, Windows
screensavers made manifest in the night. Such a Seussian image,
the colour, the tubing, the impossible bends. The word 'sewer' is
removed, even from the monochrome design I used to see.
But then there was the cat, and the door, and the field like artwork,
horizon showing nothing but more flowers, more sweet smelling grass.
There was a mansion there, beyond the horizon's pall. I never went inside.
One day, he told me. When you're ready. When you can see.
I saw him, and Seussian t-shirt prints. Wasn't that enough?
He disappeared soon after. And I searched, for months. For the cat,
for the field. Him, I could find: I saw his body laid to rest
in a much less precious place than it belonged. But I never did learn to see.