 Our lives were always tangent: A tango of touch and go With photograph moments That never seem to fade. Breaths slip Past lips, Forward in time, Down thin jumpers And loose shirts. Greedy hands stretch From the back of my mind, Rewind cassette tapes back years and years To whispers exchanged Across three sided cells, To eyes wandering past the present, To eyes watching vague gallops of the future, Oblivious to their empty pages, Oblivious to today’s bliss. You and I Patched up holes in each others armour Made by careless words Yelled from rooftops By knights and maidens Too small for the platforms they occupy. You and I Lay across intersections At 3 AM, Pretend the headlights were comets And we were spaceships Lightyear-speed-catapulting through space. But the next season took you away, Asteroid-stole you from my core, And you explored your side of space Unaware of the patch of grass I’d saved In the event you’d land back down beside me, Feel the breeze in your hair again, Tell me how much larger Orion was from up there. But we became parallel lines, Fingertips away, Weary from straining, Forgetting how to pronounce familiar greetings, Losing each other in shadows of memory, Losing place From where the years have filled us up With new holes We’ve learned to patch up With hollow hands Meant for holding, Used for hiding. Hands used For twirling telephone lines, For hesitating over keypad letters, For the backspace. Hands used To search For the backspace: Days of carefree laughter And nonexistent ‘apart’s, When we dreamt of free roads And bare feet. Days when hands were used For intersections Between fingers Forever searching For memories Of intersections With you.
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 In the late stages of fetal programming, We grew wings instead of arms. And they called us strange, Put us up on a golden stage For others to wonder How science went wrong. Instead, They dreamt of the sky And the way the clouds felt against raw red cheeks. They woke With burned faces And guns in their chests, Seeking vengeance against invisible causes. Their bullets meet chest holes Of hollow dummies, And the sparks fuel lava in their chests. So they turn their nozzles at us instead, Aiming at our wings, Forgetting we can fly. Far away, To empty forests And distant shores. We weave silken webs with our fingers, Spin fibred thread between the trees In place of treehouses. You said we’d lay here forever, Watch the stars prove their existence in the horizon, Forget the way their presence serves as a mere memory The same way we forgot The location of our webs When the guns found our beds, When we’d left Always assuming we’d known the way back. The same way we forgot Until silken strings grew heavy with dust And dreams we’d left behind were laden with rot. Evening arrives the way it always does, Shoves the door open Amidst suspended apartment dust, Drifts through my bedroom window With news of comets Transporting space messages From eons away. I hear the neighbours yell and argue, And pretend they’re croaking toads Professing love to potential mates Instead of animosity, Or variants of hate. The hum of the traffic below Transforms into cricket lullabies, Evaporates from concrete swamps That rarely run dry. I try not to dream Of babbling brooks And rolling hills. I try to stay present, Shove the pangs of discontent from my chest, Lie to make today more bearable, Lie to get closer to tomorrow Where perhaps I’ll travel To seasides and coasts, Envelope myself in their salty wind embraces. I’ll travel With my arms buried in wool, And my heart fortified with stone To firefly coves Far away from city lights To make me believe In all I’ve lost Faith in Before I slip Back into compact homes Boasting more gold than fire, Allow the sleepless night below To sing me to sleep.  |
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