Coming Home
I am rediscovering home these days.
Like an unassuming partner
I’d grown accustomed to over the years,
Till quarantine threw us up against each other,
And cast us in sharp relief.
I had grown used
To the routine of our companionship.
To my stolen hour in the early morning.
Drawing the curtains as I left for work
So you would wake to the light of the day.
To our shared admiration,
Of glorious, unfettered evening skies
In the moments before dusk descended.
To the silence in which we ate our supper
Balanced carefully on our laps
The glow of our screens reflecting off our plates.
But now we spend all day together, you and I.
Sidestep each other on the staircase,
Listen in on one another’s secrets.
The passage of the sun casting shifting shadows
Of shapes half-remembered
Or never really known at all.
Our rhythms are still half a beat out of sync;
After all, it’s only been a month. Or four.
But maybe, if we put our minds to it -
I could speed up,
Or you slow down?
Till we fall in step again.
We’ll be here for a while, my friend.
Growth
Little lines of hair
Climbing up my arms, my legs
Clogging the drains
And the teeth of my comb
Crowding my upper lip
And curling deliciously
In the crook of my armpit:
Here’s your chance
To shine —
To luxuriate!
To stake claim to territory,
So long denied you;
And to remind me
That a hairless body is not natural —
Not even really ‘beautiful’ —
And that my refusal to fight you
Is not surrender,
But acceptance.
Happy Birthday, No Returns
Forgive me if I don’t remember your birthday,
Bake you a cake
Curate an Instagram appreciation post
Complete with stories of times we’ve spent together
And sly winks at inside jokes.
It is not that I think you are undeserving
Of all this attention
On an otherwise ordinary day of the year,
Or that I disapprove
Of your quest for validation,
Or even that I find public announcements
Of private birthday-like affairs
Embarrassing to witness.
No, if I were to be completely honest,
It is that I resent the fact
That for many years I played along —
I baked the cake; I wished the wish —
Waiting, it would seem, in vain
For the day you would remember mine.
Summer, Quarantined
Blue tiles winking in the afternoon sun,
The empty swimming pool below me
Summons, unbidden, a memory —
Of crowded waters filled with shrieking children,
Generals' wives doing slow, stately laps,
Groundsmen clearing the leaves off the water.
Giant sieves on giant handles.
Now the leaves gather in windswept piles
The dusty floor complains of neglect,
And without company, the pool is forlorn.
Like everything else this year
It stands suspended, breath withheld.
Maybe we’ll swim again next summer.
Scars
It’s been many months now
And this wound obstinately refuses to heal.
I say ‘refuses’
As though it has a choice in the matter
When it is I who have been keeping it alive.
I who watched the scab mature
At first, bright scarlet, indignant,
Demanding my constant attention,
Slowly calming to a dark burnt red.
I who ran my hand over it
Marvelling at its hard exterior
Envying the speed with which repairs proceeded —
Covering up the pain with crusty scaffolding.
And I, who, out of spite,
Bid my fingers to pick obsessively
Scavenge around the edges
And — swiftly! —
Rip it off to reveal the wound again.
See? I told you, it’s still bleeding.
I knew it hadn't really healed.
Nothing is allowed to heal that fast.
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