Mosaic

I found you smashed tonight
No - not you
But my emblem,
My memory of you:

The mosaic plate you got me
For my 21st birthday,
Of Santa Maria Novella.

That time we went to Florence,
I opened the shutters into the square
And onto the world

I learnt you and Tata in a
New way then.
You snored gently,
Smelt of old,
Your mkhaba wrinkled but solid in your centre.

Tata took out his dentures

We spat watermelon pips in Rome

I started drinking coffee

I experience you as married

Not lovers, but companions.
With all the angles and curves
Accompanying that


I opened the shutters on
Santa Maria Novella square

And onto my life.
It snaked different ways after that trip.
I had a new palette for my joy
A new map

The square was dirty when I visited again
Years later

You were wizened
Hardened
Too much poison in your roots

I found you smashed today
Santa Maria Novella
Mixed with instant coffee
On my kitchen floor

I saw you disappear
Last Thursday
When I couldn't get you in the car
Your body is still too heavy for me

You were angry
As i pried your hand from the seat
You had to hold onto me so I could get you in

You disappeared as you held onto me

The stroke
The poison
Ate you

I won't see you again.

I will remember Santa Maria Novella,
Watermelon pips in Rome

I won't clean the kitchen floor.

Not for a week,

I guess.

honeysuckle

I am anticipating
The loneliest funeral

I will sit
With my small sister

Remembering angels flying down
Through the honey suckle

In a time and space
Where I still felt safe

Now I sit at 30
Everything is fragmented

I am happier than I expected to be
And sadder

But sitting on that church pew
I will be lonelier than I thought possible

Trying to say goodbye to some one
Who was only as real as the tin angel
Flying through the honey suckle

Grown Up (sauntering into 30)

There is a wry smile on my lips
As I watch my friends turn 30.
I saunter towards that mark,
Not particularly interested in
The honeycombs that are only behind me

Not overly concerned with the pools
That will mirror gravity, ahead

I am just sauntering towards 30
Feeling that this time, this decade, will be more mine
Than the previous ones

Proud of my friends who enter this state
In all sorts of diversity

Praying we will remember to tell our daughters,
If we have them,

That there is no such thing as grown-up.