Dialogue II

At my desk all morning, pen in hand

jasmine curling at the window
waiting to be touched by heated glass

day’s tide warming

my white page
a register of absence
words dissolved edges
syllables of ghosts, disoriented
by their own shifting forms

which markings will explain
the crumbling shoreline of my body a collage grey
or dripping black ink
along a rippling spine

we are all running out of time

if I’m honest, I hide plotlines in the mists
white-tipped secret twists, pulsing
songs hiding behind names
architecture bruised
landscapes emptying

ask what the story is
my answer will float
through open walls
ogged ruins
deconstructing more than flesh

my words will ribbon
sea-salted air
blurring atmosphere
painting memories
pale

we are all running to find what happens in the end

if we pause here, can you feel the story
a rift between dimensions
differently observed
unequally loved, waiting
to be told in a different language

waking early
hot in ice-packed morning
fists hard bone, rubbing
internal organs rumbling
flexed in tension
like absence regretted

or that inner warning
calling insects and animals
to pause, as if revived
by innate power
though lives hang
on thin planes of air

my coffee settles a fine mist
as I rock my chair watching passers-by
swing their arms effortlessly
feet at equal distances
walking as they should
I remember my old ways

the soft grasses along the path
between the house and fields
dotted frangipani and palm
where we played with our children
laughing prisms of light
pushing swings

but to tell this story, would mean recalling
the glue of medicines losing stick
breath abandoning bedrooms
whole houses
streets and communities left gasping

we are all running out of air

maybe it’s not you I am writing
as jasmine warms at my window
attention caught in glass
perhaps a reflection
of a corridor of selves
weaving in and out of mist

but I am disappearing

what can’t be denied
are these muscles twisting
against their own foundations
a hollowing architecture
taking place inside me, yet
the story could be scaffolding

but I am built from weathered bone

is any story ever stable
isn’t the beauty
in the shifting character of words
cube-like and suspended
in mid-collapse
paper pressed with damp ink

but I am an edge tearing

you rest a dragging foot beneath a seat of concrete
take a wreath fixed with wire and moss
lay it at the base of a monument
weave through wind circling fleshy patterns
grief caught at your skin in tattoo greens and blues

if I was stronger
I’d invite you to tea
ask if you’d like to share what only we know
within bodies dried early
but I forget the tea and the question

offering instead an amphitheatre-self
dome-shaped arena
of clay and water
maybe that’s ok
since we are a couple of actors

that’s how you remind me of stories
like weather and skin
or mist and paper
playing variously on many stages
pendulous and platformed, or light of step

ask again what the story is
this time my answer will be untethering
letting mist-dampened words fly
smiling as I invite you to lunch
to talk about anything but weather