a moment below sea level

Elena Kalis Photography

It starts in a deep and profound silence
knees clenched to my chest
ear-flaps bending water
to spin me slowly
in a grove of half-chewed seaweed
and curly black hair

There is an early morning sun
coloured gold by eyelids
and the blue of a reflected sky
there is the sound of a child
footsteps like muted fingers
touching the bone in my ear
breaking through sand and form and salt
louder than my rip-tide heart-beat
brighter than a song

an explosion arrives
a wave-front of laughter from blushing cheeks
oscillating violin chords playing from smiling eyes
the smell of spray-paint used to share secrets
the touch of morning sex

it passes over me
leaving behind restless molecules
that have come alive
never to sleep again

Suddenly, I am breathless
heart-sounds like lonely gunshots
air escaping from pores like bullet-holes
lungs like the twin furnaces of an old steam engine
arteries and airways collapsing from the vacuum

I become empty so I may be refilled
by this midday sun, and the child and the ocean
by the nuclear fallout of two colliding hearts
by the living water around me
and the living water inside me

Put your lips around mine
steal my last breath
compress my chest
let it cry out like an accordion
and save me from this silence

I summon the memory of cello music
to colour the ocean wood-brown and twilight-red
to dull this knife-edge moment
that I might keep it safe
in the soft, forgotten places
of my torn flesh

Remembrance

Walk silently through my doors and reminisce with me
We once glowed brightly under the midnight sky, you and I
We sat on benches and our mouths kept time with our hearts
Words flowing from ear canal, to heart, to mind and out through the nose.
We drowned in a mess of freshman philosophy and sickly sweet high school romance poetry
Mixing the liquids of our fear and joy we let it fluoresce in the space above our heads
We stood against the light to cast shadows upwards; we carved the sky into shapes and figures more beautiful than ourselves.
At the edge of morning you handed me one last secret
Standing on my toes I hid it behind the sun because you couldn't reach

I lost you in a field one evening because the cows and snails wouldn't tell me where you went
The moon turned to reflect not the sun, but a thousand street-lights into the tall grass so I could find you
At the edge of the water I caught you dancing, and found your hand in mid-sway
we fell over the side and sat where we could see our reflection
you asked me about death, and I told you a lie
In my memory there was firefly music and violin light
and you cast a spell to slow down time
We greeted the dew half in dreams and blushing
and couldn't find our way home till it was too late.

When it came time to forget you showed me how,
 twist grab pull and it was done
You gave me a bottle of words
and a notebook with our minutes pressed delicately between the pages

At the end it read
"We once glowed brightly under the midnight sky, you and I. We will grow eyes and ears like branches reaching out from our chests till we can see the rest of this story carved out in giant silver cursive across time and space."

My finger finds the edge of the page and stops there, a chubby semi-colon..
The blood drains from my nail-beds as I rest my head on the crook of my elbow
to remember your face, and finally sleep softly.

At the end.

Stand with me at the end of the world. Stand beside me and let me feel your warmth and hold your hand.
We will see space collapse in on itself as our holographic universe compacts and shrinks until we are back at  the beginning. Back at the point where we were everything, and everything was yet to be.

Sit with me in the light of the dying stars. I will shield your eyes with my hand as the suns consume each other. We will swallow the last breath of this universe together.

Listen to the secrets I let loose, and keep them for me. See the light in my chest when I look into your eyes, and know that I treasure your secrets as well.

Here, in the darkness, at the end of things, allow me to touch your face as our forms shiver and shake, as our atoms and spaces in-between retreat to the centre, let me see you with the very last light of my eyes. Feel the vibrations of my voice when I say your name, I will them to pass through my hand into your bones, to pierce this silent vacuum.

I am content to have lived the last of the days and nights. Content to have seen the last dust mote trapped in light and to taste the scent of a full-moon, to chase the wind and get lost and to have heard the final lament of the unwashed masses.

But now as we dance a slow sway at the edge, I am happy. As we dip into absolute entropy, I am joyous; and I allow myself to engulf you, to steal your smile, to keep it safe from the nothingness.

So that it can keep me safe from the nothingness.

Howl

A cold crisp wind, a full moon,

a deep breath and a scream.

We are wolves tonight,

clawing at the frames of our primate selves.

More than the sum of our scent and blood and spit.

We turn sour in the moon-light

as we tumble and thrash the snow and dirt

into our skin

to tangle our fur.

We stride, lost,

across the broken earth

with naked feet, in the dark

I plead for forgiveness

from the dust, and the frozen blades of grass
that we wake from winter sleep

in our path, under our weight

with our heat and careless sounds

We are wolves tonight

silver-eyes and long teeth

howling for flesh

and dreaming of stars

Geographic

You are a fleeting experience,
one that drifts away from me
like living fog on the riverbanks of my fingertips.
In the light of this beach bonfire
I can taste deeply the sweetness of your colors
and the salt of your skin.

If I held my hand outstretched in front of me
I could say that it marks the depth where my love exists.
From this distance I could see the curve of your cheek
meet the fold at the corner of your eyes.
I could use my finger to trace the gradient of your smile
like the slope of a grassy hill on the horizon;
silhouetted by the setting sun behind your teeth.

Come closer to me,
so close that I am standing on a ledge above the clouds,
so close that I could say that  I am falling into you from the high atmosphere
with nothing to slow my descent but the butterflies in my stomach.
As I fall I fail to memorize your blemishes and pores
and the wetness of your lips
because I am still trying, and failing to memorize your eyes.
My hands grab and claw at the buffeting winds
to cut through air and earth to let you engulf me.

7 books

In my library, there are 7 books.

1. I have both an ocean and a deep fire in my head and heart. I fall freely in my ocean, converting thought into breath. I adore this tiny infinity because I am warm and understood here. I bring puzzles and mysteries and ideas here to unravel them and to dissolve their length and depth in my ocean. In here I keep the galaxies and the spaces in between. In here I experience gravity and entropy and relativity as emotional bursts of color and sound. From my ocean I can feel the breath of the universe, follow the rise and fall of the stellar membrane that pulls us all together. In my ocean I float, unburdened and complete.
   
2 My fire is both terrible and profound.Its heat burns the inside of me into charcoal black and leaves me feeling like weightless ash and dust . It burns a deep orange and reaches out from the space between my heart and my feet and makes me want to run away. My fire takes too much and gives very little, but it gives a light to see through this world . My fire glows sadness and too many goodbyes, it reflects against the edges of my consciousness to shine on me and envelop me in unforgiving light. Bathing in the liquid core of my tiny raging sun, I am lost.

3. I will love you violently, absolutely, and without compromise, in short to medium bursts of time. I don't have the capacity to love at an even burn. Or maybe it's just that I haven't discovered the room in my head where I keep the ability to do that. But some day I might just open a door and know how to love you everyday every time and everywhere. But in the moments where my love is infinite and strong you will be the sun and stars to my tired eyes and the silver rain that falls at sunset.

4. When I was a little boy I danced with God. He told me stories and gave me heroes to play with, but he forgot to make me believe in him. So in my dance I drifted away and found the universe to be brighter and closer to me than any of God's stories. The universe told me that I was hydrogen in a star, an ice crystal in the tail of a comet, that I was warmed by the heart of the earth; that I was darkness and light and that I was once everything, as you were once everything, but we forgot.

5. Music can stretch and shape me to fill the containers the world presents. One vibration melts me while another can turn me into diamond. It is both fuel and a safety net when I let my mind fly away from me. It binds people together into groups that I call friends. It rescues me daily. It is a friend that doesn't judge your addictions and fears.

6. I am continually amazed by the process of being human. I am afraid of mediocrity and simplicity, I am afraid that I won't go insane someday and that I won't die gloriously. I am afraid that my life will be filled with absolute values and unmoving resolve. I am thrilled by chaos, by not understanding. I strive to always not understand, so that I will never run out of new moments. I worry that I won't see fireworks when I kiss you on the beach at sunset. I worry that I will pass away into this grey night, and not leave enough color behind in the world to satiate my conscience. I am terrified that one day, love will not be enough, and for that day I am sorry.

7. Give me the words to tell you my secrets and I will give them to you gladly. Tell me that you smell of old books and I will love you forever. Words fill every corner of my mind and soul and eyes wide open. I stand in the eye of this storm to scream aphorisms and alliteration back into the swirling mess. I write because I am not human if I don't. The words raised me and showed me life and love and hurt and moonlight and honey and your breath after we kiss. The words allow me to show you the dust motes trapped in the light of your eyes and the scent of coffee and cigarette smoke.Without words I am without hope.

 And with this word, it ends.

Little light

Come out little light, he said. Come out from under there.
Half naked and clad in blankets, they shared a bed. He sat up while she cowered under the sheets.

Little light, it's dark out here and I need your warmth, he whispered.

She whimpered and shrank She couldn't stand that he saw her hidden sun because it shared a space with her smallness and hate. She hated that he told people about her smile.

He held his hand in a shaft of light and dust motes from the coming morning.

You can live here, my star. In this brightness, in this space, in my hand.

Silence

Sometimes you blind me, he said.In you lives a tiny infinity.But today, if you want to hide your smile teeth and eyes, if you want to keep them for yourself, I understand.

Cahaya, he said her name like it was a paper thin and brittle. Like he was afraid to put it down. It stayed on his lips and left them hanging open.

A tiny smile leaks through the bed covers.Although today she will not shine, glow or shimmer she smiles because she knows he understands. Today, all that is there, in the space inside, is darkness.
But this too shall pass.

She will make it up to him colouring his Sunday morning the dark grey of her void.