In Dreams You Sang To Me
We came from nowhere. You traced my lips with your dusty nails, scraping me open. But you always did that. Scratching beneath the surface till you uncovered me. Just like how it felt to be naked around you, back when I still loved you.
One night I told you that I wanted to break you. You dared me to try. I broke an empty bottle instead, splattering the glass along the rocks. The pieces fell to the floor in waves. I saw the moon that night, a ball of red wool that streaked like blood. Hymns of prayers howled in the night. A call of the wild. With you in the distance. I followed after you like a light. Dim vapor. Your trace of nothing. Your scatter of everything.
On your birthday, I told you that you reminded me of my father. You started crying. Something in me liked it. I wanted to stab you with jagged sentences, broken refrains. Remember me? I came back to find you. Just to leave. Just like you did. You told me you loved me for the first time on a moving bus, but you whispered it like a secret.
That Friday evening, I followed your shadow, & you danced with mine. We climbed trees & kissed in the bushes. You swung me on a wooden swing. My shoes fell off & almost hit your face. You laughed away with the stars, catching your voice in your throat.
The next day I threw up.
Then you came to my bed.
Hugged me till I fell asleep.
Your bones crawled with mine under the duvet, your fingers curled around my hands. Our whispers were too loud. I always wanted to tell you to shut up.
You told me I was selfish after your friend died. Back & forth. We oscillated with the flow of the conversation. I could only make out the frame of your collarbones as you cried in the bathtub. You always had my father's face when you cried. Your eyes turned downwards & looped down your face like broken clock hands.
I journaled & fell asleep, repeatedly scribbling the word selfish. Then crossing it out. Then again. And again after that. I told you that I will never be happy with you.
Why are you saying this right now?
I don't know.
When we finally killed it, you cried so hard that you vomited from your nose. Then you started laughing. Then I started laughing, but I was supposed to hold your hair back.
My first thought it--is that the ending? It's such an oddly nonchalant moment to finish on for such an intense ... prose poem? This piece exists somewhere between prose, poetry, autobiography, and flash fiction.
ReplyDeleteIt might be interesting to try to combine this prosier mode with your poetic mode in lines, moving back and forth between prose and poetry in the same piece.
It's the details and the physicality of this piece that make it memorable. The part about vomiting through the nose. The speaker in the poem seems remorseless about causing the other pain, though it seems to have gone both ways.
If I was to discuss this one, I would ask the class who it is addressed to. Maybe it is written to the self, really. I'm still struggling to decide which one to workshop of your many new and intriguing poems.