What would your body tell me?
Now? Still? At all? Do you know
How to talk? To me? Now? Are you
Here, within me, listening, still,
Hungry for the inaccessible, waiting,
For a reaction, an acknowledgement?
Who would you say you are? Do we share
The same name? Does it feel right? What are
They going to do to you? For you, maybe?
What did you do, anything, at all, was it them,
Was it you, things were shifting, taking over, you,
Wordlessly, language stripped, language was never
There, you were kicked into it and swam, struggling,
Towards the shore, unknown, to transform your world
Into a language, your own, and they would never set foot in it.
Eyes from the past would still stare at you,
Evoke you, reimagining, longing, still, reaching
Out their arms and hands and fingers and nails
To catch you, grab you, hold you, repossess you
And everything you always had to give, they lack, you,
They want your head in the past, in the memory
Of their bodies that haven’t moved on, that are
Made out of old dust that is invisible now, that has
No air, no movement, deadness, lingering, they infiltrate
Their memories, looking for you, megalomaniacal, pressured.
You don’t have to go back, you know what it feels
Like to step back and sink, for somebody else’s sake.
They wanted to take your whole body, back, mould
It back to how it was, how they saw it, how they appreciated
It, deformation in the name of love, filtering out the old to
Suck it up, absorb it, taint the present, drowning in colour,
A second skin, subservient, suffocated, underneath, above,
Untrue, what do they want from you?
They wallow beneath the bridge of disconnection
And yawn your name across the waters, they
Want something to move, to wake up, to circulate,
They want you to make that jump, to stare back into
Their faces, assembling, bubbling, bursting, they create
Upward-facing chains with the echoes of your name
And you feel their weight, the heaviness of their desires
Projected onto you, you feel the pull, the air, the life,
Trying to turn its back, the focus, and yet, they rise from
Their knees, their diabolical prayers and stand up as much
As they can to reestablish the connection that has no place in the
Present.
Croque-Melpomene 