Exquisite Corpse Challenge: NaPo 2022

What am I, if
not statues
piled up on each other?
the broken limbs,
the marble eyes- -
the perfection of
their imperfection
makes me.
I am nothing, if not
pretend.

I am an unplanted garden, overgrown
I am an arid lake, tide-turning
I am the morning, without the sun
I am the night, without the fireflies
but for all this careless, half-hoped pretending,
I promise you, I know who I am.

Stop painting portraits over my mirrors
and sewing new names on my clothes.
You’re stuck in the storm of delusion.
You don’t recognise the skin you’re trying to define.
But I’m not a word in the dictionary.
And your kind holds no power here.
Stop taking a sharpie to my identity.
I promise you, I know who I am.

Sun beams peek into window blinds drawn closed
resting their rays upon sleeping eyes, prodding awake
the day stretches open, dew drops glistening,
bird chirps summoning the morning to stir again

here awaken dandelions, here awaken worms.
thirst leftover from stars is quenched by dewdrops and
grass blades chop breezes in half, as
a lazy dragonfly buzzes.

Balmy evening air,
when the insects return dreaming,
the sun is a half-disc on the horizon.

And that is when I stood by the shore,
the air beating the waves to rest.
Salt stung my tongue and my eyes,
as I threw myself into the sand.

I could hear the sounds of crabs
burrowing in the deep,
their click-clacking claws, their needle-like feet.

Soaring past mountains
Past meadows and fields
Imagining; Remembering
An old life
Centuries bygone
The life of a kite
A simple Chinese paper kite
Stained white and stamped with red
It would slowly unfurl in the wind
Swerving and swarming
Doing tricks
Until one day
It had gone on a never-ending adventure
A new life
Of hunting
Flying
Soaring higher than ever before

I wrote my Mom a poem
It was her only birthday present
Today my stomach grumbled
I’d eaten less than the fasters

and I swear I could feel the negative space
infiltrating the lining of my stomach,
until all I could sense was the emptiness
pressing outwards. maybe this would be how
a balloon might feel.

you know, after the kid loses their grip on its string and it slips away
into the endless abyss of a clear, cloudless sky.
the kid’s whining fades into silence; the world below fades into a mirage—
and the balloon has no choice but to climb higher, higher;
because who could reach far enough to grab it and bring it back down to earth?

i spend too much time breathing like it's a task
on my to-do list. in, out, pumping a diaphragm up, down:
not pausing to savour or smell or soak in the delicious lightness.
i am breathing in the birdsong and the sleepy sunrise
so that really my lungs are a lantern of life in my chest.

i stuff them with ink bottles and paper and light them on fire;
i feel them smolder as i breathe embers—one day
they may spark against books or wooden floors, and
erupt into fiery passions that scar the world forever

we hold those stars like delicate flowers
and name them history.

sometimes i imagine the red lumps on my skin
(which bulge angrily on my arms and legs
and spread across my body like an infection)
growing bigger and bigger, waxy and domed
like toadstool tops, swelling with fluid until (finally)
they burst, and release their crumpled, hairy prisoners at last.

eight twig-legs unfolding: stretching, as fungus-kissed autumn leaves
crunched under season’s heavy breaths,
thin spiders stumbled and scuttled out:
leaving only shadows and echoes

and echoes of shadows
and the hollow space between
the night and the moon
here everything rests.

On a strand of sunrise,
a single drop of dew,
the shivering grass blade

Dances in the moonlight
Like a phantom screaming
At a shadowed streetlight

I look both ways and cross the street
because perhaps I can find more secrets
in the sidewalk cracks there. Looking for ghostly
grocery bags and glossy moss tucked against the gutter
is a reminder that often it is enough just to exist
without any ring-lighting or movie soundtracks.