before | drunk butterfly

April 4, 2012

The Tower

I saw a silhouette of a bird circling the stone towers above – where you rest
Days seem to drift into a lifetime you were meant to witness.
Fullness fills my spirit with every circumference you initiate —
I trace your spirit to mine
fragile, girl like
hollow from the longing of something whole you once inhabited.
Regrets fill my daydreams, and my thoughts retreat to lack of time spent with you.
Only now do I fathom how scared you must have felt —
how alone!
And the painting above, the witness to your finality
Still hangs as a reminder of you, I once loved
and now
hope to encounter again
in spirit.

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April 3, 2012

The Surgeon

Your flag billowed out the window
Trumpeting politics
From on high.
I guess from a Haighted balcony you looked larger than you were
Up close—
So weathered:
Like a mistral
Scissoring trees
You’d cut in, daring in your surgery.
I had to admit
I respected you —
You made me look like a novice.
It seemed to me you knew exactly how to stitch the pain
But left a seam
That only you knew how to untie.
February came and I lay with my arm around you, paralyzed;
Not sure if it even belonged to me anymore.
I felt like it had melted and become part of you —
Everything else in my life had.
That morning I walked home from your bed,
I needed a doctor.
You tore me open so badly this time
I thought I’d never recover.
Funny how a pack of smokes and a warm cup of tea
Cures insanity.
I pulled up a chair, took a deep breath
And decided to save you on a page.
Then I could set you somewhere unrealistic
Like you had done to me
Try to make you live up to Sainthood and see how you fared.

April 3, 2012

Caramel Skies

Caramel skies slumber above
Amber leaves.
October bleeds into November together with
You and me.
On mornings like this I wander into our cable car down Hyde —
Smiling profusely
You’re sitting beside.
There are no planes to meet, no tickets to board
Just us
Ten weeks
And long walks in damp fog.
Up hills of States
Down crooked stairs of paved streams
You grab my fingers and pull tight into me —
“Your face, it’s perfect”
I feel I could cry.
And I awake to find you in December.

April 3, 2012

The Jacket

The lies you told fell far from my heart
I used to see them sitting in my lap, begging their way back in.
And then your words
They came creeping back into the pockets of my green corduroy jacket
Always the green one —
Your favourite.
Like that morning after the terrible fight we had had
Your little heart drawn on parchment with an arrow piercing through
Some would call that love
I only saw the wound it left —
How carefully you placed the spear just to puncture the appropriate part of me.
Those notes kept reappearing
Day after day
Years after you had exited my life
After I had exiled myself from yours.
I gave you your city
And came crawling back to mine.
I finally had to give away the jacket,
The presence of parchment in pockets had become unbearable —
Not only had you branded my heart
I found it hard to function when my clothes were victims too.
My triumphant return years later took you by surprise
By then you had public opinion in your favour
You had spent my absent years well;
Your gifted marketing campaign.
You tried to post your notes to me
Not realizing what I had done
The jacket was gone
And I had my life back.

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