Alone, under the floods of rain, I try
to rewrite my past with one wrist wrenching
across the page – erasing suffering
with one ragged dash through a paragraph.
I slant tragedy away from the truth
to remember a different history –
because this is the only way I can
think back to myself – in a rain so thick
the world becomes invisible to me,
on paper turning to mush, with my lies
so evolved, they could have almost been true.
- Strands of blonde hair in the back of a convertible, fluttering back with the rest of the
world that plays outside of the window. Glimpses of my mother’s pearl necklace smile
in the rearview mirror. Her hand lifting the radio melody, spelling out magic through
movement. That moving space where everything can be said because nothing needs to
be said.
Mother’s scream shatters like exploding glass. Foot slams the brake and my car seat jolts
forward, almost coming loose. Mother so limp against the steering wheel. My cries don’t
wake her. For a while. The radio keeps playing.
- Lying under the knitted blankets, hushed words bouncing against the pillow walls of
our fort. Fairy lights flickering inside my friend’s mouth, reflecting against tiny teeth
and filling the new gaps. Time suspended between the rocking chair and the bed. Time
shaken by that laugh, the one that slips through her toothless gaps with the
weightlessness of her childhood.
Waves of frustration wash up the stairs. Into the bedroom, into the pillow fort. Fairy lights
losing power now and letting the darkness in. A silence, a rupture in the space between us.
Our four listening ears. They’re arguing about mother’s pain medication again. Ox in cotton.
Trying to picture it. Horns curling out of woollen hat. Don’t know what they mean.
- Grasping a paper with the big red “A” in hand, bracelets jangling as I skip out of the
backdoor knowing that she’s there. My mother lounges on a chair in the back garden,
tendrils of light drenching her yellow. She’s wrinkling the crow’s feet in the corners of
her eyes when she sees me. Holding my paper with delicate fingers, a smile ghosting
her lips.
The curtains that cover the backdoor are yellowed by cigarette smoke. Outside, the wooden
chair rots. Redness around her eyes, the colour of the ticks across my paper. Her pinpoint
pupils in the sun. Slow steps towards her as I call her name. Try to wave it in her face. I place
in her hand, close her fist for her. Her stare remains fixed to the wall in front of her. She
doesn’t look at it. She’s not smiling.
- Catching a glimpse of my friend under the rays of coloured lights. We duck under
flailing arms to reach each other. When we untangle from the crowd, she grabs my
shoulders and releases that laugh that sounds like my childhood. It’s been too long.
When are you getting the bus? Our rainbow-touched euphoria spilling onto the dance
floor.
Girl reapplying her lipstick in the bathroom when I almost push her over, drunkenly
stumbling to the middle sink. She opens her mouth, starts a sound, then closes it. She is
watching. Me in the mirror. Put my head to the sink, stuff disappears, and I am also watching
me in the mirror. Rub my nose. Glance at the girl beside me. Pull a face because she won’t
mind her business. She opens her mouth again, closes it again. I don’t recognise my old
friend. Going back to the dance floor. Gone.
The sky is bleeding raindrops
that are dashing down my cheeks
running down my arms, washing
my dreams off the page – those lies.
What will writing in rain do?
When we can’t separate ink
From these cherry raindrops, my blood
That is falling from the sky
And smearing the potential
Of moments with their reality.
