Make do

Make do, make do.

They say to me to make do.

But what can be done when the sun rises,

Casting its light on the hearts of all,

And what desires I once kept hidden are thrown into open air and light.

Like mothers forcing linen to breathe the sunlight

Forcing the oceans in their fibres heavenwards.

What air will dreams breathe,

For mine breathe yours.

I fall and grow faint as your

Distance

Serenades the still night.

And what can I do.

What can be done

As the night calls softly to lovers

Drawing each limb

Closer and closer

Tempting the cold with its warmth

I shiver as I pull

What belongs to my body towards my

Heart

A heart that no longer is mine

So what do I do

What can be done

As I swallow the moon to

Stop

It from shining its light over my

Eyes, that weep like the oceans

Filling the depths of my space

The shallows of my existence

What do the blind do, but walk and stumble

Crying out to touch the hem of another’s coat

In the hope it will bring light back to their eyes.

So what do I do now:

Now that you whisper from inside me

The light that my dreams breathe

Fills my stomach

But

Without

You

It

Catches

Like barbs,

Sitting in my skin

Weeping at your absence

And what can be done.

Masika

Masika.

Born during rain.

A water child.

Masika.

The word the fishermen whisper

As they open bleary eyes to an ocean still in slumber.

The word the moon calls.

Singing its symphony over the watery expanse.

Masika.

The water that finds its way back to its home.

Its home in the depths.

You cross your legs, hook foot around ankle.

Delicate chin, rests on porcelain hand.

Your hands are as calm as the sea.

What is your name, I ask.

Question mark.

Breakable.

I see your eyes for the first time.

Tell me.

Masika.

'What do you want to know.'

Question mark.

Your life.

Your heartbeat.

The warmth of your blood.

The inside of your eyelids.

Everything.

Your father was a fisherman, you say.

Like that was enough.

It was always enough.

What are you thinking, I ask.

Question mark.

'You sigh after the moon.

It lives in your skin', you say.

'Will you follow me', I wonder.

Question mark.

No one will know.

When you were younger they said your father had gone to the seaside.

He had not.

Your priest wrote ‘Noyade’ onto his grave.

Your mother wrote liquor onto the inside of her consciousness.

You wrote cigarette burns into your hands.

You were nine.

We are always writing the secrets we will never share.

Masika.

When I say your name, I do not think of mountains.

I do not think of the earthy hollows where I found my childhood

You know not of that innocence

For yours was stolen,

Wasn’t it.

Question mark.

Who could take the heart of a child, I ask.

Question mark.

I look into your depths.

The sky. The sea birds. The sailors. The fishermen.

La Mar.

You say. The old man and the sea.

Such a poetic way of describing something so tragic.

Is there a word for the sound of my weeping heart?

You ask.

Question mark.

If there was I would have said it.

Masika.

How do you pronounce it.

Question mark.

Two syllables and a sigh.

The kind that you give when you feel most alone.

When do you feel most alone.

You ask me.

Question mark.

Around others.

Is there a word for how a stranger can steal your breath,

Before they utter a word.

Question mark.

Your eyes stole mine.

Masika.

She is the sea.

Born during rain, she was swept away with the floods.

Found in the depths of the ocean.

Her fingernails are blue.

Her eyes are green.

Masika.

What is left of you in the drought.

Question mark.

My heart.

I am the moon, Masika.

Will you follow me.

Question mark.

Masika.

Child of the storm.

Your mouth is like the waves.

Kissing the shoreline

My light will lead you home.

Each of us has a story to tell that will never be told.

A story that will never feel the embrace of paper.

You hide in your books, don’t you.

Question mark.

They breathe, don’t you know.

Question mark.

They all have lives of their own.

All have lies of their own.

Masika.

I want to write a symphony full of all the silences our conversations ever held.

The haunting refrain of rain.

Finding its home in your depths.

Masika.

You are the heart inside the oceans song.

The tune fishermen will sing.

As they grieve the loss of their comrades.

Masika.

Masika.

What do you find in those watery pages.

Question mark.

Solidarity.

You build it into cities,

Shape it into towers.

A kingdom made on the backs of the places you hide.

A kingdom set on the backs of the seas.

How long will it take you drown.

Question mark.

How many separate lungs does a piece of paper have.

Question mark.

Not enough to keep me alive.

Masika.

You once told me I feel too much.

I said so does the moon.

That’s why the oceans are drawn to it.

You see, I never meant to need you.

Never did I intend to rely on you so thoroughly

Like your lungs do

Of your breath as you sleep, rising and falling softly in your chest.

When you sleep I think you

Forget

The feeling that your breath has been stolen

Like your breath had been stolen.

Masika.

As you slumber, you spit me out.

Entwined with your breath

From resting in your lungs.

So out I will spill.

Out.

Out, damned spot, out.

Like the breath that falls from those sleeping lips.

Like the sorrow you hide amongst the pages of your kingdom.

Amongst the waves, what secrets do you keep.

Question mark.

Masika.

Made of rain.

Your kingdom is an ocean.

Your rule is that of tears.

Did you know I found solstice in your lungs.

Question mark.

The longest day I had ever known

Yet still the shortest I could spend with you.

Masika.

You never did have a childhood, did you.

Question mark.

Where did your past go,

Masika.

Question mark.

Into the rivers, the coursing floods of the books you read.

You look at me.

From your mouth spills the waves of what you will to be truth.

Commanding the lake to rise.

Sweep away the ashes of the past.

They have lives of their own, you know.

So do you.

Come here, I say.

But I am afraid.

Afraid of what.

Question mark.

Of what you may find.

She looks at me.

Did you know her eyes are like oceans.

Each time I look at her, I am afraid I might drown in their depths.

To never be seen again.

Let me drown.

Masika.

The lore and language of the sea.

The word fishermen whisper as the tide rises after a storm.

The word my heart cries as her tide sweeps me away.

Masika.

I was always alone.

Always alone.

Even in crowds, I was always apart.

Masika.

Where do you go,

Where are your oceans

When your eyes shut behind you.

Question mark.

To your city of books.

Question mark.

I’ll follow you there.

Masika.

I call to you.

Where are you going.

Question mark.

Anywhere.

Where did you come from.

Question mark.

Every place I’ve ever been.

Masika.

This is my catharsis.

The solstice of your heart

Walking shin-deep through your city, on its way to drowning.

The tide of your sorrow rises.

I once believed I could pull it away from you

Like the moon leads the oceans in celestial dance

But yours are made of lead

And as the water rises

You breathe in everything you could never release.

Masika.

You are the oceans

The word fishermen whisper

As the tide falls away

Finding its path after the moon.

Masika.

The word my heart cries

As your eyes engulf my being.

Masika.

Towers

I left my skin at the door when I met you. Even as a child, my doubts and insecurities held onto my gut. With icy fingers, I froze from the inside with nothing keeping me from the cold. Cold like running home from the last swim of the season, knees blue with shivering lips. Cold like the winter winds that came too early this year. Cold like the back of the freezer, you know how your fingers hurt when you hold something from back there?

My fingers always hurt.



I remember comparing the sizes of our hands. Palm against palm, your fingertips soaring above mine. You curled them over mine and I marvelled at my insignificance.

‘Like the stars, you know?’ I started.

‘Yeah’ you answered, absentmindedly.

I’d lie down on the grass, looking up at the sky. Somewhere out there, a star is dying. What will happen to the dust? Will it go to form another life, someone like you; holding in your very composition the heartache of a fallen star. The ancient aches and pains: the aged wisdom of one who has seen the birth of the worlds. Sometimes I could see that wisdom in your eyes, only glimpses though. It was reflected when you found beauty, so visceral, so fleeting.

'Isn't it sad how everything dies?'

'Not everything. Everything can't die.'

'But it does.'

You had watched a documentary about what happened at the end of a stars life. The professor went on to say how one day, in nine billion years or so, our sun would begin to die. It would slowly grow larger, swelling with the weight of its existence, until all the planets surrounding it are consumed.

'That means us, too.'

A red dwarf, you said.

'Then what comes next?'

It stays like that, for billions of year, until all heat has left it, and it diminishes, turns white, silently glowing until it is no more than a ball of matter.

'That's it. A ball of matter. That is what is to come for our sun. The sun that gives light, that scorches lands and makes plants grow. That gives summer afternoons and winter mornings. All gone. Nothing.'

One day, all stars will end up like that. All destined to become nothing more than dark masses, floating away from each other in a universe that men once marvelled at: that it could expand so continuously, so consistently.



But that's for forever ago.





You said you used to find my hair everywhere. I never told you, but I found your heart everywhere. I think you had lodged yourself in my eyes, everything I saw held its traces of you. I once wished that I could become blind, so I could finally forget you. The morning would break and the mist would rise and although it burnt my fingertips with its beauty I found that I could see clearer than ever. But I still squeezed my eyes shut and stumbled about with arms like antennae, stubbing my toes on stones, on steps and broken memories. But I still preferred it this way.

I didn't want to see the sun. Or maybe I didn't want to see what the sun could show me; every place you had seen with your eyes, force-fed, second hand into my mouth. It didn't matter if it tasted sweet, it was still yours to begin with, and I couldn't take it now.


I once told you that I felt too much. That I had once made myself the promise to walk through life with hands outstretched, even if it meant getting hurt. You said getting hurt could only make one stronger. Now, I fear that if I get any stronger I’ll turn to stone. Stones, like the broken shards on the cold seaside up north. Like the ones we used to climb on as children during August storms. Wet through, stumbling home, caught in our own world and unfazed by mother nature’s extreme show of passion. Placed in front of the fire by sensible hands, see the steam rising innocently from our clothing as we sat, dozing in front of the flames my father had made. Is it only the men who know how to make fire?

That house burnt down, three years after my parents decided it was time to move on, seven since I had left its comforting eaves. Fire, burning the places that once held our memories. The wall where we grew, marking each centimetre with graphite acclaim: caught up in smoke. Everywhere we once hid, told secrets, laughed. Everywhere our feet once stood, now stood burning. Like our house was mimicking the sun.

I will consume you, so you will not have to deal with my absence on your own.



My mother says I should forgive you for leaving me behind. I know she is right, that I should try to let go. So I try. I try to let go of the smell of springtime in your step, the hazel green timbre of your laugh, the way you used to poke me in the side. I try to let go before it gets too late. Before the sun and its fire come and burn where we once stood, before the trees fade to ash, before hearts become scarred and broken. Before we turn to stone, I let you go. Even as I stand on the wrong side of time, moving ever onward, I wish you peace. Before the towers that lined the pathways of our life decay, before all turns to dust,


I wish you well.

My Heart Does Not Break

My heart does not break

It is not yet so solid

Instead, I find it torn

Worn thin in places

And fraying in others

Where the wear of life has wrought its damage most finely

Delicate holes in the weave,

Fine patterns, can you see them?



My heart does not break when you turn your face

It does not shatter as you leave

It is not brittle

I have life left in me still

Still, as you leave

The strings tied to yours are pulled away

Stripping my heart of its muscle, its tissue and tendon

Wearing me smaller and smaller

Yet I am still alive



My heart does not break

It does not decompose,

It is an organ

Tied to the rest of me, you cannot have it

I need it to breathe, to live, to bleed

My heart is an organ,

And though it may ache, it will not die

The blood that it carries is my own



My heart does not break

It does not shatter,

It will not crumble

It still moves blood

To the fingers that shake at your absence

To the lungs that can't forget the taste of your air

To the lips that unconsciously whisper the prayer of your name

To the stomach that holds all my loneliness



But my heart, it will not break

It is stronger than that, still

My heart does its duty, commanding my blood

Though it edges around the hollows that your presence once filled

While the rest of me may cry at your distance

My heart remains alive

And while my heart does so

So will I.

Waiting

Sometimes, the beautiful things are all you need.

Noyade

Nantes.

One thousand, seven hundred and ninety four years after Christos.

The messiah. Bringer of peace.

Seven was meant to be your number, wasn't it.

Question mark.

Seven.

The number of lamp stands gathered around you.

Did we give you your light.

Question mark.

Seven.

The number of your reign.

The number of peace.



This, however, was not peace.

1794.

The reign of terror.
















I used to be terrified of the rain.

Water, falling from the sky,

Filling my lungs,

Finding it's way into my veins,

Taking the place of my blood.

Rain.

Water mixed with air.

So light it almost floated.

So light you could almost breathe it.
















My mother told me not to entertain such foolishness,

Why do you let it through the doorway of your heart.

Question mark.

I don't.

It seeps through under the doors.

It just happens.

Because when the rain falls and seeps through cracks in the walls of our home,

Pooling in the worn out hollows of doorways,

It would find it's way under my skin,

Begin gathering in my lungs.

Preparation, perhaps.

But I still found reason to be afraid.
















My father named me Delmare,

"Of the Sea"

I wandered if he knew what fears I would one day entertain in my bedchamber,

Wondered if he gave me this name as a talisman against any harm the oceans could impose.

You cannot harm me.

I wish I could say.

You cannot harm me.

I am of the sea.

I am your kin.
















I always associate winter with being nine.

It was the coldest winter season we had seen,

1785. Nine years.

What does nine mean to God.

Question mark.

Nine years before terror.

But tragedy was already at our door.

Howling with the wind we tried to block out.



Maman and Louis Philippe, second eldest, would light a fire in the old clay hearth.

We would sit around it, all

Twelve of us,

Twelve, like the number of men responsible for our demise.

Like the number of your disciples, Christ.

Twelve.

That was, until Louis Philippe left.

Then we became less.















Papa was never the same after that.

He had come back from the markets, earlier than usual,

Still wearing his fisherman's coat,

More wet inside and out than I had ever seen him.

Whispered something to Maman.

We did not hear.

But we watched.
















Too young to understand,

We watched as Maman clutched at her heart,

Breathless.

How can a heart control your lungs like that.

Question mark.

Watched as Papa caught her in her slide,

Saw the damp marks his wet clothing imprinted onto hers.

Saw something we didn't yet understand as grief,

But would forever be ingrained in our consciousness.



This is what loss looks like.

















Noyade.



The only word Papa ever spoke in his sleep.

When he did, Maman would cry silently in hers,

A subconscious communication between two lovers.

















Papa was a strange man after that, the townspeople said.

He began to read to us in the evenings.

Dante's Divine Comedy.

Only ever that. Nothing else.

He said it was because we needed to know this,

We needed to dry out our souls, ready for God.

I thought it was funny that he, a shepherd of the sea would come to this.

He who christened his children in her honour,

Whose family held her namesake and allegiance,

Would believe that we needed drying out.

Maybe it was all the rain.
















Dante, who has been to the underground city.

I, too, have been to the city of bones.

I have seen the faces, floating in the water.

Seen the still hearts of all those who have gone.

At nine, the year that God forgot,

I resolved to seek him.

Eloi, Eloi, it is I, Delmare,

If I go down to the depths, will you be there.

Question mark.
















What does seeking entail, you ask.

Question mark.

A quest.

I sought him, in my own way.

Like Dante, I looked for him in the eyes of other people.

Was that wrong of me.

Question mark.

To search for the living in the hearts of the living.

To search for that great love in the love of another.

Was I wrong, I ask.

Question mark.



Who can say.



















"Get thee to a nunnery"

Ophelia,

They would call me.

For I share her fate.

Ophelia, my desired. Why do you do this.

Question mark.

Where is your God.

Question mark.

He is in love.

Where do you find him, Ophelia.

Question mark.

In the lovers I take.



















To her fate I myself assigned.

And to a nunnery I did go,

When one too many took his fill

And I was filled with naught.

God stopped dwelling in the love I sought.

Or maybe love stopped being part of the motion.

To a nunnery.

Cold, they say.

Harsh, they say.

But do you really know.

Question mark.

Do you know where I find my God.

Question mark.

In the pages of thy holy book.

It breathes, you know.

The life of the wilderness,

Can you feel it

Dry on your lips.

Question mark.

Do you know the taste of the floods

The smell of the fire

All consuming in it's passion.

Question mark.



Do you know.




















Will you open these eyes.

Question mark.

Will you see what I see.

Question mark.

The infernal columns would come,

We could see them.

Twelve.

What does twelve mean to you, God.

Question mark.

The number it takes to destroy.

Two times the man.

How could you let this.

Question mark.

Or did you have no choice.




















No choice,

Like the men who were made to find you

After seeking their whole lives.

Stripped naked of their earthly skins,

Is this what you intended.

Question mark.

Was this the raging flood you spoke of.

Or is it just another of Gommorah's faults.

Question mark.

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabach-thani.

Question mark.



Why have you forsaken me.





















As my hands were tied,

My dignity, my honour stripped

Like that of God's anoint.

Wiped from my head,

The same head thrust towards the pave

Bare and forlorn,

I saw the inscription on the vessel the would carry us home.

Would be our final residence.

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate".

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

I had long since had any hope.




















Noyade.

The watery grave.

We were drowned in the tears of God.

He wept,

Wept for the innocent, for those sent to him to early, too soon.

And in those tears, we found solace.


















I could see my father in the bottom of this old fisher's boat.

A different perspective than what he would have seen.

I wondered if he knew.



Did he see it in the grain of timber,

Did he know, like the wood knew

Whose face they would see last.

Question mark.

That I was made for this.





















She is Delmare.

She is your own, brother.

She is your own, seas.

She is your kin.

She will join you.

She will join you.

Delmare.

The Truth

'I want to be honest', I tell him, 'But honestly, I think I'm too scared.'

'What's so scary about the...' he starts, 'Oh.'


And then he gets it. It's the giving, giving, giving so much of yourself away, threaded throughout the words that we write, tangled between characters, scents, faces, achings. My skin stretched over the sky, the wind is my heartbeat. I feel like I cut out parts of my life and cover everyone I know with the pages my words fill. But still, it's a false ceiling, a veil to hide everything that goes on beneath my skin.


I'm afraid, I guess, like we all are, that one day someone will see the blood pulsing underneath this fine skin of fiction that I drape about myself, and realise that I'm alive. Because then it's real. Then it's breakable, tangible, then this honesty will drip from my fingertips and fill the room, for the fickle entertainment of whoever so wishes to glance down upon, to seek and find what they wish. And I'm not sure I'm ready for that. 


Because the truth, it brings me to my knees and forces me to crawl from room to room, pulling me down with its weight. It fills up every empty corner and bounces off my cluttered walls, hitting me squarely in the chest when I'm not looking. It hangs like a veil over each doorway, dousing me with the smell of the people I so desperately miss, with the way that one persons skin felt against mine, with the warmth of their hands that I'm trying to forget, and the way that they could capture the stars.


And all the adults in this world have spent hours trying to teach me all of this. "The real world", they call it. But I spend hours each day, squeezing beneath the weight of all the things I'm scared to let others see. Edging around the honesty that I am real, I am alive.


So I lie awake at night with the weight of the world resting on my lungs, and the pictures I wish I could share dancing before my eyes, and even my bedsheets seem to weigh me down with the truth I cannot share and I'm not too sure how it all got this way but I'm learning to live with it.
My heart is becoming a haven for every feeling I try to suppress, every part of life, of honesty, every memory I try to forget, and I'll tell you that no matter what I do, it's still getting pretty crowded in here.


So I leave the house. I escape to another world, I talk about others. My words wrap themselves like wedding bands around their lives, but the bands become the dust of Saturns rings and the truth, which I try so carefully to hide amongst their flotsam and jetsam, cuts like a knife through everything I use to conceal. 


And that scares me. That I could let someone see me, with all these cuts and bruises, with this blood my heart beats pulsing in and out of my skin.
Because I forget that the blood that races through the white water of my veins has fallen from the mountaintops that are so high they can almost touch eternity, that the same dust that made the stars is a part of me. 


And I wonder when I'll learn.

The Lady in the Moon

Drown me in your breath. I want to rest in your depths, rising and falling with the move of your heart. I want to hold the part of you reserved for the moon. For I am the moon, and I am the stars. I am the soft fallen snow on the mountains, the whisper of silence through the forests, resting on the branches of the fir and the pine and I desire you. The swell of your chest as you lay in slumber, the flicker of your eyelids, the inside of your cheek, the kisses on elbows, fingertips, knees, toes. The smell of coffee on your skin, the lavender and wood in your hair. The taste of the ocean, swelling inside you as big as the earth, as your capacity to feel.


For you are the ocean and you are the seas, you are the unknown and the unfamiliar, the intimate and the discovered. The salt on your shoreline calls to me, and as the swell of your lungs beckon, I await. Await the calling of your depths that I can hide beneath, the currents that will lead me back home. Home, to every place we have ever been, to the sweltering heat of the apache sand, the green expanses of a wide set country, the misty secrets in the mountains of the Orient. For the places where our souls find rest, they inhabit our consciousness, the salt and light and taste and sound imbibe, and we become as like.


Become as one. You know the feel of the raging storms on the Sahara as you feel excitement; the flooding seasons, they carry your tears. The waves sound your testament in tongues ever changing, as drawn ever onward as they seek after their own, after the moon. And we hear the song of the moon, strung aloft and alone, her banishment from the oceans her choice of lament, where destined to remain she cannot look away, drawn with the same enchantment that pulls galaxies into dance. So she remains, a symbol of ache, besotted with the poetry of pain, the prose of seperation which, when read in the night sky causes ones heart to weep, until the dawn draws close in soothing embrace and silences the longing she holds in her circle.

Oh, she is I. I, who carries the luminosity of the sun, dimmed in my palms. It lingers on my cheeks and in my eyes, where lovers may glance and admire from their comfort, their comfort as mine, where you are. I am the lady in the moon, the distant lover, the homesick star. I, who ever searching, yearns for the touch of one long departed. In my reflection you see the whispers of a time of past joy, the intonation of a voice greatly missed, tinted in shades of longing. I live only in the night, where the voices of the darkness sing serenades over your distant form. My stomach will hold you, as long as truth reckons, so when the rising of the sun shines too brightly on you, I may still see you, dwelling within me.


Can you feel the space we once inhabited, like I do? Hear the thunder my heartbeat creates, calling to your ancient storms, echoing your melody. It resounds in your bones, a cry of intimacy once known, once lost, now further gone than legend, more misplaced than myth. I want to crawl under your skin, feel your pulse as my coverlet, to know the creases of your fingers, the skin along your back. But I cannot, for more than worlds seperate us. The atmosphere bemoans our loss, though natural it may be. For even the air despises to see such seperation, the stars sing symphonies of lament, for eyes such as theirs were never meant to know such sorrow.


Your eyes are the depths, sweeping your path across the globe, swelling with your lungs as you reach for the sky, and though expanses may stand between us, my light will reflect in your shadow. But that is all, we may never touch. Never may we feel the warmth of anothers palms against ours, never will the scent of another be so familiar, for this is our destiny. For I am the moon, and you, the ocean, hold the stars.