Sonali Pan |
|
Maybe
you were crafted for a tender-boned love, drowsy-eyed, open
palmed, languid and lazy, something muted and dialed down,
something to compensate for the hummingbird in your throat,
and the hundred teething insects crawling under your skin.
I cannot pretend to forget your hand-stung cheeks, and the locket
digging into your chest, the shock of contact, fuming out of you,
your dizzy legs, and how you walked out of the burning house
calmly, no horror in your eyes, sang to the flickering streetlights
a night-song, while night-drunk, and tried to forget the daylight
altogether. But maybe, now, it is time to collect the ashes, pull
the shrapnel out and bite its head off, time to hang your head
on a shoulder instead of off the rope. Maybe it is time to settle in,
draw the curtains, hold a hand, and close your eyes, but only
to rest your eyelids, only to go to sleep.
Rinse
we’ll dream a cleaner dream with laundered sheets and homeliness,
no hip-flask masculinity, none of this bitter moth juice will be dripping
down your chin in a few more months.
the knives will walk out of the windows in spider-trails and the sunlight
will fall right into your ribcage like the showerheads you’re too tall for.
we’ll get rid of this bloody-mouthed, swollen-gummed, broken-jaw glory
and have the walls stripped down to shadows of their previous selves.
these fever-dreamt nightmarish footsteps would all turn to vapour
with the newfound warmth in your heart and we’ll bite
into the morsel of pills with fervor for once. we’ll pull our bodies
out of the swimming pool, and lay them under the sun, let the cold spill
out like blood from an open cut, and maybe,
maybe we’ll still fit back into them.
we’ll dream a cleaner dream with laundered sheets and homeliness,
no hip-flask masculinity, none of this bitter moth juice will be dripping
down your chin in a few more months.
the knives will walk out of the windows in spider-trails and the sunlight
will fall right into your ribcage like the showerheads you’re too tall for.
we’ll get rid of this bloody-mouthed, swollen-gummed, broken-jaw glory
and have the walls stripped down to shadows of their previous selves.
these fever-dreamt nightmarish footsteps would all turn to vapour
with the newfound warmth in your heart and we’ll bite
into the morsel of pills with fervor for once. we’ll pull our bodies
out of the swimming pool, and lay them under the sun, let the cold spill
out like blood from an open cut, and maybe,
maybe we’ll still fit back into them.
Sleepy Town
The electricity pole still kisses the clouds.
The man who used to get drunk years ago,
got drunk again, his limbs hanging like tangled
earphone wires, a patient pair of friends unweaving
them quietly, without prayer. All while the sun
tried to spin the tea leaves into gold. See this
place haunts itself after a while, no gods,
no monsters, just the silence, settling in like feet
into old shoes, like roots into soft earth. The light
still falls in the same patterns it used to. The sky
will blush in the evening and they'll pour you a
cup of hot coffee. The people here always go to
bed on time but no one ever wakes up.
The electricity pole still kisses the clouds.
The man who used to get drunk years ago,
got drunk again, his limbs hanging like tangled
earphone wires, a patient pair of friends unweaving
them quietly, without prayer. All while the sun
tried to spin the tea leaves into gold. See this
place haunts itself after a while, no gods,
no monsters, just the silence, settling in like feet
into old shoes, like roots into soft earth. The light
still falls in the same patterns it used to. The sky
will blush in the evening and they'll pour you a
cup of hot coffee. The people here always go to
bed on time but no one ever wakes up.
Exhale
summer misses us like my lips miss the feeling of his on them, softly, sadly, hypersensitively.
we pull curtains over old friends and close doors in the face of an old memory. it still haunts us
in the evening light.
i dream of you when it’s warm, when it’s dark outside and i switch on the fan, it sings to me in
creaks and croons, some gentle lullaby as if to say ‘rest, breathe, wash your feet".
sleepy, tired, boys and girls that need to be tucked in. lethargy running through our limbs. the
irony of it.
remember when we went to a coffee place but no one had coffee. we stuck our tongues out, and
the air satiated our need for bitterness.
we’ll close our eyes with the sun.
*
summer misses us like my lips miss the feeling of his on them, softly, sadly, hypersensitively.
we pull curtains over old friends and close doors in the face of an old memory. it still haunts us
in the evening light.
i dream of you when it’s warm, when it’s dark outside and i switch on the fan, it sings to me in
creaks and croons, some gentle lullaby as if to say ‘rest, breathe, wash your feet".
sleepy, tired, boys and girls that need to be tucked in. lethargy running through our limbs. the
irony of it.
remember when we went to a coffee place but no one had coffee. we stuck our tongues out, and
the air satiated our need for bitterness.
we’ll close our eyes with the sun.
*