The bedroom chair, the skyline-
infant lights tremble like rows
of candles on a mantle.
The place is almost pretty
through wide windows,
their arms open to autumn’s
toasted darkness.
A voice on the radio sings
about the road, ‘it’s who you
look like, not who you are’.
You think you think too much.
You’re hungry. You light a smoke.
You’re capturing random words
like butterflies in paper nets.
You’ve always been this way,
a pool that’s too deep to be safe.
Like the glass that holds the world
outside, you frame your life-
a photo you’re reluctant to touch.
"If we please the Gods,
If we be as little children,
If we astound them with our love of living,
Then will they drop their manna
From heaven." - Starbright by Dee Rimbaud
Fabric holds my skin to itself,
touching me like love would.
Thoughts of you surface
like the sun from a cloud
when you're driving west
in an afternoon so vivid
you could reach out and pick
pieces of light like petals.
I want wintry wind to tousle
my hair the way it did
when I stood on your deck
in a morning so clear
my eyes tasted the view.
I want your water on my lips
like berries from a glade
I remember like a dream-
or the way you traced
my nipple with your tongue;
how your breath on my skin
lit me up from the inside.
Grass underfoot, the sky
is a quilt spread over your bed.
Without you, I am just leaves
that sad trees have cried
into ponds of waning colour.
Palms open, I drop the past
like so many falling stones
and allow the eyes of my life
to adjust to your light.
Leaves bleed from somewhere above.
Some splash the ground, others never land.
Floors that are too clean lead to ICU
where curtains have fallen around a fat quiet.
It hasn't been long they say, offering tea.
I was caught in traffic while he was dying.
Despair hangs like a person from a belt.
He's warm to the touch-
but his face is cool and firm like wax.
I fall into him, want to pull him back inside
himself. I expose his arm;
touch the tattoo which made it his.
I hold the artist's hand.
It no longer belongs to us; or him.
Through lifeless streets of struggling light,
I drive mother home. Home. The word
stings my eyes. We are dissolving
like salt into sudden sadness.
Autumn's crooked wind tugs at my hair.
We will fly away in this car- to an ocean
where diamonds will dance on peaks
of water and laughter will come easily.
I exhale. I blink. I see his body-
still and silent as marble.
Like a drunk, I stagger out and into sleep.
My hands smell of death.
They stack pieces of memory like blocks,
scribble words across a dream's tablecloth.
Charcoal letters grow dark and determined,
"Daddy's not dead. Daddy. Is. Not. Dead."
Up, up inside night's darkness ...stars.
Winner of the 2003 Kota Press Anthology Competition and a finalist in the Poetry Institute Africa Annual Awards, Candy M. Gourlay's work has received recognition from local and international communities. Her poetry, prose and essays have appeared in an assortment of print and online publications. Gourlay was born in South Africa where she continues to work, write and live with her husband and three children. She believes hope is a place you can go dancing and doesn't like wearing shoes.