Neon Mermaid


 
 

2018

This year I learnt a roman emperor went to war with the sea.

 
 

 

Hands

My hands are lined and dry,

A palm reader once looked upon them with excitement,

A feast,

They look like old hands,

They look like laboured hands,

They bare my old soul to the world,

My hands remind me that everything I touch I can handle

I can conquer for these hands are not new, 

They remind me that everything I touch I can bestow,

For these hands have endured lives.

 
 

 
 

Youth

Looking at the curves of your face as the night goes on,

each dip and lash brings back a time and a feeling not as sweet as nostalgia but as fervent as anger,


Back then we wore nervous energy all over us like skin coloured stockings,

Barely on the surface yet something as small as a chipped nail could tear us apart, 


Hot stuffy nights we breathed in oxygen and out all the love and despair two girls could fill inside a room, 


We felt everything,


You and I,


We were small and big in the world back then.

 
 

 
 

The Way Things Were


The night I dug my feet into the dry grass

and the sky looked like pink fire,


You were here and we were going to be okay,


The same spider from last year was decorating your porch,


I couldn’t stop looking,

I couldn’t stop looking at you,


We didn’t know why the ocean water was so warm that night.

 
 

 
 

Birkenstock Tan Lines


When I submerge and my body becomes salt,

I remember the place the Portuguese stranger made her blush,

Her feet were creased with Birkenstock tan lines when she lied to him,

What was it about the way the light touched her face there and the things it made her say.

 
 

 
 

Itches & Stiches


On our first date I lied to you 36 times in a row,


I didn’t mention that I’m terrible at taking care of myself and that flowers remind me of the moon,


I mentioned him that was stupid of me,

I’m sorry, that damn pain was the only comfort I knew,


You looked at me like a version of myself that maybe I could be,

so I didn’t mention the hurricane of hurt I can spill if I’m not careful,


I lied to you instead; 36 times in a row when I kept calling you my friend, I’m sorry, I was afraid,


You were bashful and tongue tied,

You walked like a confident accident,


I needed to knead your insecurities into a blanket of self love,

love me.


I wasn’t ready to fall in love, not yet, I couldn’t do it good yet,


But your teeth stains were the only thing worth setting my alarm clock to see, 


I wanted to morph into anything you wanted to experience just to know what it would be like to be desired that much,


My pressed flower chest wasn’t ready for you yet and I forgot to mention the hurricane of hurt I can spill if I’m not careful,


So I lied to you instead; 36 times in a row when I kept calling you my friend,


I’m sorry, I was afraid,


I was a bundle of itches and stitches, sketching anxious metaphors into melting ice cubes,


Look I’m doing it again.

 
 

 
 

Mother

My mother remembers the homeless man all day,


Watches flight attendant perform mask to mouth,

not out of fear but because that is someones job,

Each day as care and tender drip from her finger tips 

and seeps through her sacrifices, 

Like bee takes pollen from flower,


We drink her nectar.

 
 

 
 

Father


My father lives in my laughter,

His large Australian freckle stained

shoulders, a place named refuge,


Marked from his youth in the sun,

in rivers, in oceans,

No wonder the water feels like home.

 
 

 
 

Desire

He smelt of salt and melancholy,

And I was thirsty for the sea.

 
 

 
 

Platonic


What is it about the way that you talk,


And what we are not saying.

 
 

 
 

Déjà vu

When she arrives and embraces me with her malice,

She feels like an old friend,

She is nauseating, teasing me with the notion of how time might bend,


And how it might forget us.

 
 

 
 

Paper Trees

I used to play with paper trees,


Spending hours peeling back each layer until I found the words,


I found the words once,


It read:

I am not yours to keep.

 
 

 
 

Death


I have lived with death for two months now,

Today I thought maybe I should go sit in a graveyard,


He startled me when he replied,


Perhaps we should seek the ocean,

For am I not made of sand and salty blood?

 
 

 
 

Nostalgia

He always arrives the same way,

Abrupt and ready to embrace me with his vengeance,


I lay down and succumb to him one memory at a time,

Intoxicated and paralysed by his conviction I wonder;


Is the past real?

 
 

 
 

Second Wave 

I have a reoccurring dream of stadium churches where the men sing and spill beer,


Of the small and dark sweaty wine bars of Zagreb, rush hour and popcorn littered cinemas,


I wake up to sanitised embraces taking something from me I didn’t know I had to lose,


This physical distance is growing in my heart, 


1.5 metres is too far to reach you.

 
 

 
 

Betrayal


Last time we spoke we asked ourselves how are we going to embody freedom?

You told me you're going to dance and I told you I am going to surrender myself to the sea,

I can hear it again, all that we are not saying,


When I am with you,

Oh, how quickly I betray myself,


You leave me every damn time with the same question on my lips,

Who am I?

And will I ever know?

 
 

 
 

Once a Sea Witch



I think some time so quietly I didn’t even notice,


My heart picked itself out of the ocean and begun its journey to land.