red booth
review

We forget the rim of sleep,
move into the shiver
of longing. We carry
our souls, our bent despair,
the blocks of childhood,
love's sobs.  The journey
is less true, hovering
like a spirit, over our bones,
our soft mouths.
The map of our bodies
tells how years are folded
and put away. As if
the bells had been stilled,
all sound sucked out
and disappeared.
Nothing has a name.
Only a half sensation,
the seam of purpose and dream
as the sky empties
of stars and rain, we walk
as if we knew what death was like,
as if that loneliness
had become our blood,
the blind pulse of the sleepwalker,
a figure eluding time
and innocence, trailing
syllables of smoke.
 

I am 
unspooling.
Words fractured
quick and slow as what
I wanted to say becomes
loose in the wind,
it was something to do
with meaning, and it was lovely,
the phrasing, all evaporated
in the air now, leaving me
unstuck, bits falling 
away, only my little heart 
still beats. Is that enough?
 
 

- Mercedes Lawry