what is now will soon be past
Just because you do it
doesn’t mean you always will.
Whether you’re dancing dust
or breathing light
you’re never exactly the same,
twice.
why you love her and what to do
I
Because she, like you, was raised on the
hard side of the lie and when this giant
of a woman folds all of herself into you
so small, you want to keep her for good
—safe from all that ever was and will be.
You want to take her away from
everything that ever hurt her or still can
because neither of you know your
daddy’s voice.
You know first name and surname and
little facts like the country hers was born
in and that yours had puppy dog eyes
that cut through your mother’s
stubbornness
but as for his shade of black and the way
your hands might feel in his . . . you may
only guess
because you joke that perhaps they were
the same person . . . that would explain so
much and would also make you illegal,
but some of the best loves have been
because you knew her past before she
told you—those were all of your
mistakes too, happening in a different
town aged sixteen with grown men
some of whom had grown wives
because your bodies always betrayed
your young selves—making you smell
like you shouldn’t, giving you a scent
you weren’t yet old enough to own
doing women’s work when you were
barely old enough to bear a man’s
weight, a heartbreak, or a child.
This is why you love her.
II
So you’ve got to hold her with both
hands at arm’s length.
Say there’s too much of her inside of
you already. Feel like you cannot stand
any more. Tell her no, pull back, it
hurts.
Know that she scares you and you’re
far too used to life as a lone wolf crying
at the new moon and marveling at its
orientation in every single new country.
Let her know the relief of leaving things
behind. Tell her it’s a pain you’ve
grown with. Tell her you’ll come back.
Visit. Really mean it.
Tell her she is better with someone else.
The kind of person who stays in a place
and builds and knows how to stay put.
Know that her mothering isn’t
something to get used to. Tell her you
stopped relying on this aged six.
See her happy in the future with
someone better than you. Feel sick
when you feel it, but know it.
q
If you
were married to yourself
could you stay with yourself?
My house
would be frightening and wild.
another tuesday
I bet
there are millions of stories
in your legs alone
a man tells a girl
while he is pulling on his boxers and
gray socks.
I love my wife,
he says,
putting on his trousers.
I just need the fire,
he says shivering.
Your kind of fire.
It is December.
She nods and thinks
that he looks like something else,
standing there
glistening, self-important
about to drive two miles home to his family.
She has a bedsit
and a healthy dream life
long brown legs and the kind of eyes that
sink you.
Too much sadness in her
but so much youth
it doesn’t quite show, not yet.
Odd how
often
beauty is another type of prison.
But what can you do?
He pays one full hundred
and really when you need it, you need it.
She did well at school
when there’s no call for them.
They become a nuisance,
always reminding you of the ghost life
running alongside you,
the phantom life
you could have had
if you felt at home
if everyone where you grew up
didn’t get off their heads.
If there’s nothing like the next high
if you cook magic in your kitchen
who needs food
when it takes you and sends you on to Venus,
it doesn’t matter when you get
chest pains
or sick
or forget how to speak
if your veins are driving you out to sea.
So she offers up her arms
gets lost in the pretty side of life
in the crevices
slips into its hot folds
when Tuesday rolls into Thursday
and there’s no night anymore
no night
just ink-blue blankets
dusted with hours of star
warm
engulfed
gilt-edged minutes.
In a place
where nothing stings.
Not a thing.
success
“I’m two hundred percent of a lover
and it gets me into trouble,”
you laugh
fooling no one
not even yourself
yes, you’re a beauty. Yes
people want you
but only at first.
Your talents just about ruin your life.
Yes. You are dazzling
yes
you’ll make money
but only too much
and fast.
Yes. You’ll be rich
but only in cash.
the biggest tortoise in the world
“They found the biggest tortoise
in the world in South America today,”
you said, massaging the tender knot at the back of
my neck
with one hand
removing your boots
with the other.
“They had to get a lorry or something to remove
it, imagine that.”
I said nothing, thinking of all of the things yo
understand and
all of the things you don’t
like how I will love you forever but
probably from afar
not in the way you want and
how you’ll find somebody new
to be with. It’s only fair.
Maybe he or she will have
tightness in the neck
a passion for useless facts
the power to stick around and
really, I miss you already.
now that it’s all over
She says she cries over me on the
train to and fro
m work
and one day it will be better but it
isn’t better now.
she is just like my mother, but alive.
Knows how to love
quietly, completely.
Something about the way black women
hold your heart.
You can leave them all you like but you
can’t stay gone.
what love isn’t
It is not a five-star stay. It is not
compliments and it is never ever
flattery.
It is solid. Not sweet but always
nutritious
always herb, always salt. Sometimes
grit.
It is now and till the end. It is never a
slither, never a little
it is a full serving
it is much
too much and real
never pretty or clean. It stinks—you can
smell it coming
it is weight
it is weight and it is too heavy to feel
good sometimes. It is discomfort—it is
not what the films say. Only songs
get it right
it is irregular
it is difficult
and always, always
surprising.
body
If I’m entirely honest,
and you say I must be,
I want to stay with you all afternoon
evening, night and tomorrow
pressed into you so tightly that we don’t
now whose belly made what sound,
whose heart it is that is thumping like
that
until I don’t know if the sweat on my
chest is yours or mine or ours.
things it can take twenty years and a bad liver to work out
1.
Truth is a beauty, whether pretty or not.
Love doesn’t always mean you should stay.
Sometimes the truth has to punch you, twice.
Love doesn’t always mean you should stay.
2.
See, nobody warns you about yourself.
The red in your eye.
The trap in your mouth.
The person who hurts you the most in the end will
sbe you.
Almost every time, you.
You’d better learn to forgive yourself.
Forgive yourself instantly.
It’s a skill you’re going to need until you die.
3.
When the girl is all kinds of weather in a day
do not enter her lightly.
Your senses will not survive it.
You can leave your tail,
head, eye lights on
come, go hollow
running away from her
without any of the good parts of yourself
thinking you did nothing wrong.
Wondering why,
when you smile,
blood.
4.
Love is not a safe word.
But it’s the safe things that kill you
in the end.
5.
You lose too much to fear.
You might choke on all that you do not say
and
can we talk about when it should be no
but you say yes?
6.
There are parts of you
that want the sadness.
Find them out. Ask them why.
7.
Make it.
If you don’t
it will be a tragedy
and then
everything else
the sky
and everything else.
lipsing
Some lovers look you in the mouth
right clean in your mouth
and your story comes,
running.
revelation
One day I will tell you what I’ve been.
It will scare you.
sabbath
Your skirt is split too high for church.
The elders glare.
You are your mother’s daughter.
Always meaning well and falling short.
Where is she these days?
they inquire
with knowing faces.
You don’t give them anything.
You say,
Paris this week, then on to Italy.
They say, oh that’s nice
with their mouths
and the air says all the rest.
You don’t care.
Everyone says you have her face and it’s a face
that’ll open doors.
Even locked doors. Especially locked doors
and so,
the skirt is split too high for church
but the collection box is yours.
You look like an actress,
says the usher.
Sit here. Right here. Relax.
not the end of the world, but almost
The day was not the best, especially in
my head. I was thinking calmly
about stepping off the side of the mountain in the rain
arms outstretched
embracing this life, this empty space
one last time and making it look like
an accident. My eyes were blurry with
salt and I hadn’t eaten in days but my
mind was clearer than air on a blue-
sky morning in the Black Country.
I said,
No hard feelings bright, hard world
but maybe
just maybe you are not for me. Maybe
I’m stretched too thinly, pressed too
deeply into you in a shape that I can’t
keep without cramping and maybe
just maybe your breath is too cold.
Perhaps human nature is just too
fickle to understand
and rainbows aren’t all they’re cracked
up to be, so why hang on until the
rain ends?
That was when I saw you.
Eyes did meet, lightning did not
flash but I thought to myself, Who
wears a reindeer jersey and red shorts
in May? And anyway you looked kind
and the sun was peeping out a little
and the sky was still dark and it was
still drizzling but everyone needs a
little kindness.
You have a smile that turns down at
the corners
and those gentle kind of eyes.
Those gentle kind of eyes.
We sat on a hill in the car looking at
where the beach met the sea and the
rain hit them both and I (quite
desperately, quite selfishly) said, Drive
into the sea with me, just once and
it’s done.
You drove fast in the opposite
direction to a blessed place of broken
brick and stone and said, This used to
be my childhood house, and then
drove me further
on further
to a purple house safe up on the
hillside and said, Hey,
one day this will be home.
It wasn’t perfect. It isn’t now. I still
have days when I want to exit the
system quicker than you can say don’t
you dare give up now
and you still have days where you
ca
n’t even taste the sweet in raw
honey and neither one of us believes
in pills.
Days when I so want to kiss you but
your mouth is sour and my thoughts
are bitter and I’m angry, just mad, just
crazy with it all
but we are each other’s home sweet
home, Love.
The roof is screwed on too tight at
times and the walls of our house can
pinch a little but, my God, they are
always warm.
waiting for the check to clear
What an odd, romantic time it is, if
you remember not to panic.
How many times has money almost
driven you mad?
You only need spices to throw in the
bowl
you only need flour to make some
kind of bread
and maybe somebody to lie in the
dark with.
Somebody’s hands to touch.
a
Your father died this morning.
I scramble to the supermarket to buy a
phone card and call South Africa
from the bottom deck of a South
London bus.
You sound smaller than you are.
“I am wearing a skirt,” you say, “can
you imagine?”
I cannot. All I can think is in your
language
oh God, Ngiyakuthanda.
My God,
how you are loved.
You cannot speak for long
you have family to sit with
sweet tea to steep,
a mother to attend to
food in plastic and foil to warm
and stow away
“Okay,” I say, reaching the stop
by Camberwell. “Let me know when
I can call.”
I hang up.
The sky
is trying to rain and all I can speak
is in your language
into the broken line
into the dead space.