one number, added to another
‘Yes’, you said, as though the word
was foreign to your tongue,
we learned to ask for more than broken toys,
when we were young.
Our houses were affordable,
our fathers paid the bills,
our mothers had the most abysmal
culinary skills.
I rode my bike to school and back
in patent leather shoes,
I had to wait for everything,
since I could not refuse.
I was never beautiful,
I’m all I ever was,
they say they’ll come to take me home,
but no one ever does.
We’re blonde, because we have to be,
we’re dire to behold,
I was all I’d ever be
when I was six years old.
We learned to measure everything
against the perfect kiss,
only love denied is as methodical
as this.
You hit me with a stone when I was
swimming in the sea,
the pain is not forgotten,
it’s the voice of memory.
Right between the eyes, it was,
a perfect arc through space,
there is no scar that gravity and time
cannot erase.
You cut your foot on broken glass,
we smoked a cigarette,
our lives would not be so entwined
if we had never met.
Our Barbie dolls were dressed in pink,
our clothes were second hand,
we were lost in beauty in a
heartless wonderland.
You remember things about the past
that I do not,
who are we, if we are not
the crucibles of thought?
The scent of incense in the air
reminds me of the dream
where you and I were sewing up
the night’s unraveled seam.
The needles were a little blunt,
the thread, a bit opaque,
thinking this was all there was to art,
was our mistake.
The wound was anatomical,
the skin, beyond repair,
the fog will tatter everything
and leave the body bare.
We’re normal, superficially,
though twisted underneath,
we smiled at the camera
with our sharp uneven teeth.
We were photogenic
in our polyester suits,
seriously wild in our leather
go-go boots.
Time has not abandoned us
to gravity’s regard,
the bones that lie beneath the flesh
are old, but very hard.
I used to lie awake at night,
undreamt of by the past,
now, I think the afterglow of gamma rays
will last.
Belief is mathematical,
we all know how to add,
the dream of counting backwards
was the best I ever had.
mt forest
December 12 2014
and May 24 2016
#300
This painting was done from a photograph I took of my friend Brenda, when we were about 11, I think. It was taken in front of our house in Gibsons. That's her house in the background. I gave it to her when she came to visit last year. She did indeed hit me with a stone, right between the eyes once, when we were swimming at the beach. She threw a stone into the sea, and I surfaced right up into it. Smack, right between the eyes. You couldn't have planned it if you'd wanted to. She also cut her foot on broken glass at the same beach. I wasn't there for that, but I heard the story. We've known each other since we were 8 years old.