Interlude (21)

A poem from November 2021 that I think would have slipped into this series if I had been writing it then. If you’ve been tracking the story, then perhaps this should be Part 12.1 – harking back as it does to those early growing up struggles. I’ve made no edits, copied the poem exactly as it was written then. How we break and then try to fill the cracks with poetry…and it seems, it is never enough! But that’s a poem for another day. Will leave you with this now.

Without an inside or outside

it wasn’t much of a home:
maybe it was just a window,
without a room, without a wall,
without an inside or outside,
without end
keeping things apart
slicing through sentences, consequences,
a window that could have been opened
but never was
because no one wanted to

it was the time I made things up:
purple shadows and obstinate light
sounds like memories of fragrance after
the garden is emptied of flowers
things that walked without ever moving
things that talked without ever speaking
they said not having so much wasn’t having so little —
need recalibrated itself every night
they said what you really want depends
on how far you really want to see

it was the time I made up a name for longing:
a name that has no tongue or has two
a name that dips and swells like night air
on bodies watching sleep
like strangers on a late train
a name that gurgles in the throat
like a last breath, like the whisper
that never left despairing lips,
they said it was nothing because
it was also anything

it was the time I made up a sky:
with stars the taste of quiet
black stars for day, an orange moon
to unsettle the dusk,
they said having so little light
wasn’t having so much dark
and though the window could be opened,
it never was, the window
that could divide though it was nothing
the window that had lost its wall
lost the home that wasn’t much of a home –
every time I looked through the glass
I saw myself, looking back, from the other side

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