Theyareducks

Happiness feels wrong on the tongue —
Sweaty palms on a loveseat, tapered smiles in a crowded room —
You watch your dreams come and go,
as a bitter pill dissolves
and dribbles down
into an empty pit.

Someone stares through a digital wall —
A dust pile crumbles, stars erupt into an infinite echo —
A page is either torn or written.
A shiver turns your lips blue. You bite down.

The world wasn’t made for you and me.
But it should have been;
but it can be.

I’m not used to being clean,
having my skin glow from
years of washing and purification,
watching the dirt that clings
under my nails flow indifferently
down the sink.

My attention lasts barely a minute.

I live in worlds away, among half-built universes
and half-baked dreams, structurally unsound
buildings that my friends hold up while I brave the rains.

An evening on these waters is choppy and directionless.

But when someone comes along
with open arms, I am swept away
by a blinding fog.

I want — I wish — I hope to find a hand
that guides. But the only hands I trust are mine.
These hands that have long gone untouched,
unfamiliar with the light.

I grow in diagonals,
along the cracks and
edges people barely

touch and in doing so,
I often miss out on
important surfaces, and
the basic geometries
of school children.

Colouring within the
lines was never my
strong suit but after
years of assembling
skeletons I find there
isn’t any flesh to give
shape. Wood didn’t
bring Pinnochio to life.

The Earth spins about
it’s axis every day and
I am its gravity. I am
a cat’s collar, I am a
painted landscape,
I am the ringing
buzz of a quiet room.
In the space between
a hum and a non-hum,

I grow in time with a
firing neuron and
fizzle out again. I can’t
wait for the buzzing to
be normal again, “but it
will never be normal,”
but it will never be normal again.

Is this all there is?
But I’m pretty sure I’m an earthbender,
I can mould asteroids into burnt-
out stars,
scoop up galaxies and
blend them into milkshakes.

I’m pretty sure my hands can knead bread and
butter and put them into the mouths of
hungry planets. And I dont need to stinge
on sprinkles either.
I’m pretty sure that when Sisyphus looked up, he saw a tapestry charting all the stars that ever burned and never looked down again.

The one that reflects light in the dark; the one that swallows speckled darkness and makes a home for it.

The one that approaches, the one that shies away. The one that shies away, the one that approaches.

Turbulence builds a bridge to solidity.

The one that crashes and calms. The one that dims to brighten.

If you put two mirrors far enough away from each other, maybe they can reflect the universe in between. But you can only hear a heartbeat if you keep completely still.

Why would you tell me? Is it because I tell you too? And it’s all usual. And we go on. Why would I need to know.

I suppose I’ve made choices, and not everything is an analogy for something. But I don’t want to know. And you know. And I am bad – I am the bad one.

And maybe I should be alone.

I miss myself. I hate the silence. I hate the buzzing.

And maybe I’m a hypocrite.

But we have our terms. We created them. We can create them.

But you never talk. Not anymore. And I am coddled. Coddled and protected.

I don’t need protection.

I am selfish.

I feel selfish.

Maybe you’re better off with him. Maybe we can’t be friends.

I don’t know why I can’t be less selfish. With you it’s always take.

Maybe it’s the hormones. It’s probably the hormones.

Why would you do something I told you not to do? Why won’t you talk to me? We all want to be useful and right now I am not useful.

Today I wondered why my body hasn’t given up. Stay resilient. I was irritated.

She’s there with him and I’m here and I’m supposed to be alright, so that’s what I’ll be.

The universe had a thought–
Two beings should be made

To circle each other in time
And create paths of dust

That litter the sky
In soft kisses, dripping words

In the explosions
Of a gentle touch.

The universe had a thought
That two beings should wander and converge

And wonder at how two faint outlines
Can create bursts of light

And how two beams of light
Lay firm on the heart.

The universe was a satin sky
And their love was an eternal grain of light.

Cradled
by long laps
of liquid,

thin but buoyant.

Crunching in tempo
to soft, swaying beats.

A caress
of limbs lost in translation,
lost in warm static buzzes
fading to a transparence

that dissolves the mud brown clay
into an expanse, away,
away, off to where the sky
melts into the sea.

The ocean may take me
but I am already hers.

Writing in pastels.

sometimes people reflect light
like mirrors
into the corners of our eyes

living life in periphery
in hindsight
in hope
of better tomorrows
while unremembered yesterdays
cloud our lenses

we breathe life through other people
through their hearts
and through their eyes
we remember to love again.