porcelain promises (02/06/2025)

she wakes thinking of the other devotees circling, orbiting, destined never to touch, and she wonders if they ache the same way.

the moon snuffled under a downy blanket 
“seasonal rhinitis,” they tell her, and:
“it will pass soon.”
but fog licked the horizon clean 
and it doesn’t look like fading

gus is taking the dog for a walk but it is scarcely light out. scout's hurried footprints echo along the hall, and though they are frenzied and light and clip at the carpet fibres, they sink into my head, lethargic like keeping up with the metronome, slow thick dull dream fingers upon the grand keys on evelyn’s side of the duplex. “i am not quick enough.” i could have prevented this by confronting the dulling teeth of fear that tear at the three-letter-folds of muscle –

there is a chasm inside her
a cavity that not even assurances of the misty future can fill
with its porcelain promises

gus and the dog have woken me. light curtsies as it enters, polite through the geometric blinds. it casts silhouettes the colour of ripe nectarine on white walls. i try to measure them with my eyes. they are neat isosceles triangles that have fallen on their sides. i wonder why they are so tired already. their fatigue seems to rub off on me. 

she wakes thinking of the other devotees
circling, orbiting, destined never to touch, and
she wonders if they ache the same way.
if their fate drills and whines into them
grinding filing away at their patience
until they collapse into a continual gravity of stupor,
she feels the soil fall over her still sleeping limbs
she feels herself spinning into its manifold branches

i count up the angles of the shadows as they vary. an ablution, i slough off sleep quietly. the angles help. i imagine measuring tape snapping at my fingers. i stay very still.

scars are ironed out;
stars trill as they dazzle tauntingly.
do they want her to implode?
she can feel it: her exoskeleton crunching and crackling,
a birthday sparkler with no song

later, i roll onto my stomach and curve my spine, stretching my collarbone, feeling my neck fold backwards. stick-on-glow-in-the-dark stars have landed on the ceiling. they might fall some day soon as i sleep.

steamed welts rise in absence
silence absence hollowness
tears meander hot and thick from her novocaine cheeks
oil spills, sickly on her cratered surface

my forehead sinks into the pillow. there, the dog and the keys and the triangles and the plastic stars do not exist. their absence is a salve. but this balm is dark ochre and gelatinous and it stings a little because the emptiness reminds me of the silken slyness of what i am escaping: the growing of wings that will expose my bare, pale thorax. will the sunburn be agonising when i face the ascent? i sink back to sleep.

an axe buried deep in a trunk:
thick and deep in the folds of its side,
it wrinkles in on itself.
locusts crawl in
she wants them gone
she wants the axe back, she thinks,

her metallic coolness
her incisive attention
her questions, her candour.
bring her back to me