Symmetry: The paint fight.

Today

I practice breathing with the earth

I try and see symmetry

Like the sort we made as children,

Pressing hands to hearts full of paint

And bringing skin together

Copying motions we shouldn’t yet know about, and don’t.

You grab my thigh, hand sticky with paint

And I hold your neck, pushing you away yet pulling you closer

We do not know.

I rubbed green in your eye and you put yellow in my hair

Our fingers stained with blue as we struggled on the grass.

That night I washed the red from between my thighs

The bath water swirled with the colours of the butterflies we tried to make

But without paper it all seemed so hollow

Now it's almost as if we spend our whole lives

Building the replica of those afternoons.

We still fight, the grass changes colour

From grass and concrete to timber floors and mattresses

We make patterns, pressing hand to heart

Bringing skin together

Copying motions we wish we didn’t know about, but do.

You grab my thigh, hand sticky with sweat

As I hold your neck,

Fingers blue with the cold that only fighting can bring

And we know.

I wash the same colours off me as you sit by the bath

‘You pushed me away’ you say with green eyes.

‘I pulled closer’ I say

As I hold my feet the way a child does.

Push my yellow hair off my pink face,

And smile.

You look away. Green eyes, blue heart.

The same colours swirl around me

And though I try to carry them with me

Without paper, it all seems so hollow.