Grow

I watched it all grow

and then slowly wilt, back into nothing

a cycle introduced, a pattern to be followed.

-

I nursed it back to health, burning late nights,

weary but awake with the worry,

just to watch it all dissolve.

-

Trauma unresolved.

-

I felt the ashes in the air

try to bury themselves beneath my clothing

and felt nauseous knowing

the history my breath contained.

-

I still see the funnels,

the chimneys ablaze,

and remember what was lost by our own hands.

-

I still see in your face

the pain I have felt, but never dared to mention

you look ready to melt.

-

We had it all coming, look at what these books

were telling us. We created these circumstances.

I waive the guilt, ‘wrong place, wrong time’,

I wash my hands again, but I won’t sleep again tonight.

-

I don’t deserve history repeating itself,

but it does so by night,

a loop, replaying, projected onto the

insides of my eyelids — wicked memories

in vivid colours,

predominantly red and black.

-

The cranes linger in the night sky,

unmanned, silent, metallic fingers

waiting for a body to grab

and make disappear.

A black car, laying in

wait in the night rain, salivating.

-

I leave the lights off, counting the pennies,

and melt into the darkness,

sinking, sinking, sinking.

-

A plane above blows an engine,

a car nearby crashes and

evolves into a ball of fire,

a factory sees another worker lose another arm

and doesn’t pay out

and I hide behind my pains, behind my walls,

behind it all.

-

Put up the posters,

re-organise the bookshelves,

then bring the walls down.

-

Leave me behind in the rubble.

-

My home does not exist

at the centre of this chaos,

our epic monstrosity.

How can one feel at home

knowing what happened on the

ground on which they stand?

-

The cold of the water feels

like being shaken, the

lungs desperately kick for air.

The flames lick at the roof of

my mouth, but this will

only last a moment.

-

A final vision: all our bodies

floating freely atop

the warming water,

limbs thrown around like

leaves in Autumn winds.

-

Teeth and rings in buckets, again,

and the seas

slowly rising.

Gasping.