(lead me with your strong heart, / your gentle hands, / I will follow you to the top of the mountain, / to the edge of the world.)
3.00 pm. I am taking it slow. The third time this week. Is it possible all I have done today is dream? Parched lips stained blue; shrivelled tongue tells a different story.
Does anyone wonder anymore?
I greedily eat blueberries one after the other, fingertips stained, a purplish-blue tongue in a way that reminds me of home.
Home.
Of the lizard residing under the hot water system. Aching palms—cramped with crushing flower petals.
I’m looking for me while following you.
Lost.
Is it just that I’m changing? That I’ve never been lost. What am I looking for again?
She drifted from well-trodden paths.
I uncurl tired limbs, bleeding hundreds of words in connective pockets holding truths and untruths
contested spaces tumbling out into semblances of sentences
words get caught
in old knots of unfulfilled love,
knots curdled with fear, bitter with age.
Sentences collapse. Folding back into the back of my throat. My back sighs
someone is calling my name
Falling. Fingertips sink. Walking, tracing the edge of the world with footprints—my breath leaves no impression, the tangibleness of the fine dust. Hope.
Does she realise she has entered another reality?
I feel the mid-March air bite at my skin through the fine woollen thread—forest green, fleeting moss-green wisps echoing stories of love and abandonment. Coarse hair. My eyes sting with bitter tears.
I’m teetering on the edge.
Someone is calling my name.
Jo Curtain is a poet and short-story writer. She writes for Coffee House Writers. Her work has been published in Geelong Writers, Blue Daisies Journal, Sour Cherry Mag and elsewhere.
In picture. DENISE BELLON MANNEQUIN DE WOLFGANG PAALEN