*an overrated fruit metaphor*

Now she is in everything.

She was born when the sky was red.

She came home with the birds.

She had a musky scent about her,

An olfactory explosion of milk and blood, coal and incense and a concoction of burning oils.

I took her in fragments.

Her incomprehensible plainness.

Her dreamless mind, her guiltless heart.

I looked down at my hands, what did I have to offer her?

Then I touched her face.

Her presence erased all the evil in the world.

Her gaze was absolute absolution.

In the moment that she was born, noone was incapable of happiness.

Who was I to be the exception?

I loved her with the hesitation of a loveless creature.

Now I love her forever.

Then, a frenzy. Women in and women out.

Bangle clicks and fireworks.

A room was prepared.

A cot of jute and a flimsy mattress.

Laughter and a screeching fan.

There I saw, my mother as a mother for the first time.

As if I stood on the brink between past and future.

And when she smiled at her, then me.

I saw two souls, not one the wiser.

Two souls that merged together to make a golden bubble of love that surrounds me.

Too tender to touch, too delicate to kiss.

Too precious to be looked at.

Too out of place in the shabby, dimlit room that held its breath for her.

I became a person after her.

Quite ironic because my soul is seven years older than hers

But the truth is, she made me.

With her constant need to belong and her wide eyed curiosity, I found a purpose.

She's the connosieur of the love in my heart.

I remain in awe of her like one is in awe of the sunrise.

The constant astonishment over something ever changing yet wondorous.

Her face is the supercut of all that's gone.

The secrets of the universe lie in her hair.

And I don't miss her but when we lay on the carpet till the morning light.

And she tells me all about what's in her mind.

The change in her voice, the bumps on her face

Evidence of a childhood slipping away.

I miss her at the strangest times

Like when she asks for coffee and they give it to her.

Or when she's next to me and I don't have to look down.

I want to hug her and tell her that I love her

But she would say it's obnoxious.

So I let her do my hair and I tell her it looks nice.

We share the same clothes, the same face,

And parts of brains.

We are bounded by some intricate design of fate.

The astronomical calculations and divine interventions.

And all the tricks and turns to the right time and place.

Soon she will grow up, as little girls do, as I did.

Don't be distraught, I tell myself

It's just time collecting his dues.

Besides

What is sweeter than stumbling through the world for the first time?

What is more magical than a brilliant mind breaking free?

I saw her in a dream and now I have her.

Everybody wants to change the world, nobody wants to save the last bite.

Everybody wants to build community, nobody wants to pick a friend up from the airport.

Everybody wants to be inclusive, nobody wants to smile at mum.

Everybody wants to be a poet, nobody wants to have a conversation.

So avant garde, the way he cannot feel.

I am coated in white light, his eyes are burning red.

We are too sedated to get up and leave.

There's a flood on the streets. A man for every weak.

Bandaids for your burnt soul, for just one body each.

There's a war on my conscience and there's a war on your clothes.

There's blood down my thighs and there's blood up my nose.

There's blood on their hands and now it's growing mold.

There's cobwebs of anger on ceilings of bones.

Pay respects to your captors.

Get on your knees and get to the job.

Be nice and tell me what you need.

If you resist, I will just have more fun.

I used to have enough so now I want more.

But now that I am dead, I am a commodity.

He sticks out like a sore thumb in this land of dead.

He's bruised and broken and so out of reach.

His hands have grown teeth and the walls have grown ears.

A bullet to her head and the dog cowers with fear.

So romantic, the way it is a sin to touch.

So voyeuristic, the way they watch.

I am a sack of hay.

I disgust myself.

I have been intoxicated by toffee shots and ultraviolet lights.

Who is it in my head?

Is it me or my artificial friend?

Whose hand is that under my sheets?

Is it me or the dry eyed people of the TV?

His eyes are the water reservoirs.

I tell him not to cry. I scrape my skin for food.

Who are we anymore? All we have is love.

And if I can't have love, I will settle for gore.

So if one day, I look up at the night sky

And all I see are red dots.

I won't be surprised. I wont go empty handed.

If I can't have salvation, I will settle for bloodshed.

Tie your shoes and tie your tongue

Eat your feelings, eat your young

A wet dog in a slaughter shed

So I will eat my hunger and go back to bed.

My sister smiled with teeth. Now she is under a concrete slab.