Young Writers Society

i came home late last night, tears stripping my face clean of dirt
without consent--they glimmered bare in the dark,
like something vile, something that had lain unnoticed within me for too long,
hidden too much, felt 
raw and undeserving and like geysers. 

in a hallway that was the Lascaux, in a house 
with trembling knees, within a person 
who was afraid and held her coat tight, tight, tight around her shoulders,
for fear the dam would break and she would be a lake on the linoleum: 
a lady with bandaged ribs slowly unravelling--turning 
into a storm, turning into the patter of violent raindrops 
that plunge to the ground without ever being sure of anything. 

i saw her as though she was a fractured ray of light, an error, 
a rip-off of something that was marvelous and sane. 
i saw her on a summer day, her hair wild and unravelling and her bandages 
falling apart--her: whole, forever, holding onto a trellis, onto a hand,
onto a carbon-based lifeform as vile and undeserving as she. 

she had talked of broken sunrays, she had talked, as was the norm, 
of pessimistic railroads and tides. the sea 
shifted beneath her feet, and things were less confusing, and she was whole, 
she was breathing, she was alive, she was--

'an optimistic pessimist, i swear, there's no better way to put it.' 

life, life, she had talked of life, and her coat hung loose around her, and he smiled--
vacant, blind--smiled like he could see her, like he could sympathise 
and share in her disappointments and her hopes. and he had talked 
of strength, of life. he had said,

'there is a moat around you, and you are the windowless castle, 
and it is dark inside--shutters closed, candles flickering.

                                                            i will get an axe and we will break that drawbridge down.'

we will break that drawbridge down. 



the drawbridge has fallen and angry soldiers drive their ranks; 
they tear at the walls, they ravage every bit of her soul, 
and a Ganges rushes down the corridors and into the moat 
and there are no more windows than there were at the start. 

there are no more windows in me than there were at the start.
and the woodcutter has abandoned the castle for a forest; the woodcutter 
promises to return but he never finds an axe. 

i returned home that night, and my feet were like clouds, and my heart 
dripped into the moat like a river. 

my mother saw me. your eyes are like the new moon, she said, 
like foggy days in agra, like a
                                      ganges
                                             in the sky
                                                  that is
                                              murky,
                                                 murky,
                                              dying,
                                                 dead. 

my eyes are like the new moon, i said, and i smiled, and i stumbled, and i caught 
my skeleton around me before it fell. 

but not before the spaces in my heart gaped open, gaped wide--gaped 
and turned into windows. and suddenly, the Lascaux had an entrance, and the fog 
had a season, and the light fractured wildly and clashed with the colours of the sky. 

i went to bed telling myself that if i am the Ganges, 

then even it must enter the ocean.