literature

What he saw

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Halohid's avatar
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Literature Text

I keep thinking about the bike rider
The one who rode past the night we kissed on the street corner
I never mentioned this before
I didn’t want to admit that I was kissing with my eyes open
I’m sorry
I was trying to live that moment to the fullest

Or something

My memory
My sensorial memory
Places that kiss on a summer night
It sets the light at dusk
The temperature in the high twenties
The pavement as cooling
My sensorial memory exposes skin
A strapless dress perhaps
A light shirt
Half unbuttoned
Out of character for us both but

That’s what my memory says
My calendar says different
It places that kiss in mid-winter
We were both tipsy so dusk was long gone
And yet
And yet
My fingers remember the greasy film of sunscreen

My memory is
Flawed
Faulty
Not to be trusted

But I believe in the bike rider
I felt him pass with every inch of my skin
Every guilty eyelash shifted with his breeze

I wanted to run after him
To stop the spinning wheels and demand
Could you tell?
Could you tell that was the first time our lips had touched?
The first time any lips had touched mine in years
Do you know what you just witnessed?
Do you understand the potential that was that kiss?
Could you hear the blood in my veins as you flew by?
Each heart beat its own tidal wave of excitement
And total paralysing terror


My lips have hurt people in the past
Well not my lips
Poetic license
But my heart
My body
My life
My fear
My fear has left whole cities in ruins
Well not whole cities
But
Poetic license
But
It felt like cities
It felt like ruins

Don’t take it personally baby
But I kissed you with my eyes open
Drinking in the moment did I say?
Fuck that shit
I was hunting for bricks
Bricks with which to build my own labyrinth
To fence myself off from the world
I long to be impenetrable
I want vines to spring up
Weeds to flourish
Graffiti to appear:
POISON
DO NOT ENTER
A DRAGON SLEEPS HERE

Don’t take it personally baby
That kiss made bile rise in my throat
Did you taste it?
Kissing you made a winter summer
A night day
It uprooted weeds
It tore down walls
And vines
And I had never been more afraid

But here we are
Three years later
And you have not been damaged
And the city not destroyed
And I still think of the bike rider
And wonder how much he knew
Because that moment was so big
So apocalyptically violent
That he must have felt it
He must have known it
As he flew past
I wrote this yesterday. Completely sleep deprived and chaotic (as I always am the week before a show opens and two of mine open next week). Fortunately, sometimes I enjoy what chaos does to my writing. Hope you do to.

Also, as some of you may already know, I have a blog where I post some fiction, politics and a lot about theatre. It is schoolforbirds.wordpress.com Head over if you are interested. But I'll forgive you if you want to skip the long-form dramaturgical analysis of theatre shows. :P
© 2013 - 2024 Halohid
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raisingedge's avatar
Beautiful. I love this poetry.