so you’d find god, not a mother

i follow myself across a blameless bridge and dig my toe into the part of the plank that’s breaking in
i’ll fall through and flash a smile; we won’t know why i haven’t opened my mouth all morning

the crimson clearwater is a safe haven for the children that god has decided are dirty, because we spend our whole lives trying to be newborn. trying to be the most pristine we have ever been. what more do you want from us

one year gone and not a single tear, i wonder how long i’ve waited to have been the most fearful of freshness
the most forgotten and found on the fore-front of the imagination of men. i am unused, so open me up

i am waiting to be wasted, to be thrown in or else i throw myself, have you seen it; i thrash. i watched that water ripple across my face like a wild spear-point, poking out beneath flesh

i am flushed by the flight of a thousand race dogs, and i watched them, i bet you boasted

when i came down and didn’t come back up. like you’d done it yourself. i had been of no consequence to nature’s kingdom

i am the kind of girl who does not point i tilt my head up and back and make a noise, the sounds are there but have you listened for them
i have not yet been for my own, a good woman or gentle friend who comes to say i know
but i’ve been busy. i’ve been blue on the shore and had to miss myself, watch my feet so i am not stung

or strung up for view. had to go quickly; you cannot read a book by ripping out it’s pages, but you try
you try to destroy me so you’ll know before i say what most disturbs me. the disruption of
but you might as well smash the screen door it’s stopping nothing from eating my skin

it’s slashing bits of brisket against the kitchen wall and screaming i made this for you
it is screaming i’ve been so hungry breathing i didn’t eat breathing i wanted to wait until you came home

murdered by midnight the clock is an accessory to the cold hard corner stone you cried to in the yard
i wasn’t there but i saw you at the fountain of it, centering yourself and risen up like a righteous divinity. i could have laughed

your challenges were not enough so i had to make up my own, with tired eyes and a melancholic lunchbox i set out for a sunday which did not involve a car drive to clean up the city, so you’d feel helpful

i did things so you’d look to me and find a god. not a mother

i did not clean up after you, i looked for you and everything else came after
but you were not all bad. you did not look or listen but you touched and that was a taste i cannot bring myself to describe
how you climbed in me from outside the locked door, skin making circles on cells i felt altered and i crawled
i felt like you because it was all i had in me to do; you were a hard shell that leaked on occasion. and the times you melted from the heat i caused were the times i was most in love.

i was wrong to write you up as a woman rich with a man’s soil,
but i was the worst when i hid under sheets with you. i wielded a power unseen by the wordsmith
by the dagger’s owner i could have cut you from cheek to cheek so you’d smile for me

i knew by then you’d wreck me not only but leave me stranded, take my hair in fists and kiss it coldly, mistake it for gold because you’d never seen it glisten

spring came and i left you with a fortified city uncaptured by creation, i left being blue on that shore. i learnt it was not my most desirable thing because you wanted it. i threw it away without second glance

i had no option but to sink my own ship and i did it gladly. i landed in the stream and the wind took the ocean before it took me; i could taste the salt like a ring around me and it was warmer than i’d ever been
straight to the blue beneath i had felt it before and i was back home. the further below i became the harder it was to see and the depth burst my ear drums;

it was blacker than night and i felt only your touch