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.

Verona

We watched opera in Verona
Over 10 years ago now

I don’t remember the opera
Aida, maybe?

I remember you,
All our childhoodness caught in one breath we breathed together.

Your fragile-strong
Around me, always.

How we learnt together:
My stubborn chin-forwardness,
Able to adventure because of your fragile –strong foundation.

We could stand in the wind together.

That night Verona’s colosseum
Held us together, a basket of stars and voice,
We were so close we didn’t need to hold hands.

Over 10 years ago, now.

I don’t have the words to tell you how I miss you.

Into your hair, we sing

We hold you up
On our broken legs
Glass shards in our feet,
But it is your breath that is failing this time.

We hold you up
Take your heart out of your chest
Put it on the roof for the sun to strengthen

We take each of your fingers
Kiss them gently, take off your hands.
We put them in a tree nest, so they can sleep
So they can stop their frantic tangling and rest.
Remember their writing, the hands they have held
And the banners.

We dip your feet into a bowl of salt water
They are bloodcaked from glass shards and thorns,
From your own blood and the blood your carry in your mouth
Below and above and around you

Into your hair we sing the sea and
Futurepossibles
Some flying fish
Some sunken stones,
Our broken voices just able to curl round your face
To take some of the weight,

Just for today

I wish you dancing

I didn’t know you
I know only your ghost
Traces of you
Snail trails of words

Of marks on my lovers body
In his car
His phone
His email


I felt your fight
Your life, your grief
Pulsing through him

I fell in love with you a little
Your pulse through his fingers

My love for my lover bittered
Through you
You, lemon in milky tea, turned
Us sour

We have never recovered.

I have never forgotten you.

I touch you sometimes in digital space.
My fingers tracing your face.

He left you for me
After he left me for you
After he told each of us about
Marriage
About dlozi and home.

Now you are dead
I hope this was your choice
I hope you took a breath and flew gently, away
From this world of fight
World that you didn’t have the right dimensions for
Too wide, too deep for such small ribs

I hope the choice was yours and
Not the man you had run to
In your pain
The man whose violence played your pain
Out
On your body

Now you are dead
Sky-bound only

I send you sky-fish for travel companions
And I wish you dancing
Happy, wild, hard
I wish you dancing.

To lovers, to the moon, on endings of things

I tend to tie myself in knots you see,
Thinking you don’t get my intricacies and then I am left – when you walk away-
With a ball of string that wont reply to my questionings so lets
Stop

Stop and let me try this another way

When you kiss my hair and I feel to pull away
I’ll stop
And feel the shudder anyway
that shudder that you,
If you are perceptive,
Will feel and eventually you will leave

No. Not like that.
So lets stop.

Stop, wait,
Let me try this another way
When I am talking your and your eyes glaze
And my dreams and my monsters are lost in the haze
Instead of swearing at you, screaming, I will go quietly and
Put my dreams one night into the salty sweat of another man
And then come home to you

But wait! Wait, stop
That wont work you will feel betrayed, slighted
And my dreams will still be lost, dried and rewashed in some one elses bed

So lets stop,
We can try this another way, when your breathe is too
On top of me and your hands too deep into me
When it hurts and I want to say stop I’ll just breathe til
You come and then we can sleep sweet and close
And our dreams can make up for what we lost

But wait, I know myself that will never work
I will resent you sickly sweet and I’ll spit at you,
And slime away and sleep shivering in the area designated
My side of the bed

So lets stop.
Stop, there will be a way,

Last chance, last try maybe
When I want you to hold me and you stand mannequin
Esque hands at your sides
When my body feels untouched and I really just want you to look
I’ll … I’ll go and shower and take that vanilla cream you like out and
Rub myself seductively, just, in your line of sight until you….
Or if you don’t I’ll put on my pyjama’s , those comfy fuzzy ones,
And I’ll sleep sweetly next to you, resenting your breath until you wake up one night with a pillow over your face and I’ll

Wait, that’s not right I
Just get myself tangled up sometimes and
I cant see which side I am on with these
Lines

So maybe,
Maybe we should just

stop.