pi & anne

When I was a child, I used to imagine at night how the world would end. I would climb under my covers, one corner pulled over my left ear, never over my head, and visualise us trying to send last messages to each other, living in the basement, the sky burning and bombs falling. It was never about what happened, it was about how it made us feel. I was a weird kid that never told anyone about this, although I think others imagine the same, in different ways. I still do it today, there’s always plenty of reason. I see it as inner training for the moment when I will need it, when I have to exhaust my feelings but remain capable of acting. You never know.

I am
just as afraid of death
as you are,
this is the truth
that lets me sleep at night.

So hard
when I hear nothing
not to be nothing
falling on the concrete floor.

I’ve noticed that there are no more blackbirds in our neighbourhood. I wonder if they are dying out everywhere now and what will happen to all the poems and songs in their honour? I love the Beatles song. In a few years’ time, perhaps no one will understand that the morning has become emptier and that an idea of blackbirds was important in our lives. Funny. How people cling to themselves and what has been. It’s somehow charming and nonsensical at the same time.

The blackbirds are dead
in our neighbourhood,
did you know
the colour black lives on a night hill
far away from any town?

The alarm clock rings. When I open my eyes, there’s just an outline of the window, the sun is rising earlier (it doesn’t, but we lean towards it, I like that, what a good reason to get up, because of all the affection we feel for it).

Is it clearer
than the sky
that’s just blue
in our eyes?

Firm and bulging
turnip cabbage leaves
in a glass of water:
shouldn’t we be so thirsty too
for honest introspection?

There have been six good impacts in my life so far, and by that I mean they’ve hit me on a lonely road with the unhinged sound of a burning forest. One of them: My future husband gave me a kiss on our first date, and when he got on the train to go home that same day, I learnt something about certainty without logic.

Any question
ever asked:
a wildcat
roaming
through high grass.

Asking question after question—
never have I felt
so alive
among a bed of small stones
rounded by spring.

Maybe I should quit
slamming doors
for all one is worth …
To have faith
in a world of cairns.