I turned 22 a week ago now. In the lead up to my birthday and for some time after, I always find myself reflecting on the year that’s passed and what I’ve learned and how I’ve changed. Initially when someone asks me ‘do you feel any different?’, the answer is most often ‘no’. Because I…
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I awoke one day
To the soft knock at my door
Of a deep darkening fog
Where there wasn’t before.
Now her hand lifts, beckoning
Me to step back into myself
And I tell her I will, but only if
She promises to stop watching
We weave connections in human webs –
An invisible tangle of paths entwined,
As our fingers leave trails of human threads
Woven into a memoir of time.
I think my skull would rattle if you shook it –
filled with an assortment of past things.
I’ll pluck and keep them as trinkets,
souvenirs, mementos of has been.
I fear losing thoughts, and days,
so I pocket reminders of each place I go
(in heart, in mind, in body, in soul).
I awoke with my head submerged in water,
ears blocked, the world locked out of my perception.
There’s a knock on a window somewhere but I can’t tell which one
this muffled echo is coming from – a pathetic attempt at a sound.
I’ve lost touch with my senses, like they’re running out of battery,
confused with each other, I can feel sounds but not hear them.
Anything can sound like a voice if you need to hear one –
kitchen white noise – the refrigerator humming,
creaks in the plumbing are less scary if you long for just someone
(anyone?) to hear you (maybe I heard footsteps on a creaky floor).
I shed dead skin in a trail
of diary entires and old poems,
snaking through my life’s path –
the fossils of the human heart,
footprints, preserved in stone.
my cheeks flush easily,
outsides matching my insides,
brimming with feelings of
pink – blissfully enchanted,
rosy and love-filled,
We blink silence back and forth,
Secrets beclouded by our eyes,
A tightrope tension between lips,
Or hearts, together we’re tongue-tied.
Lauren Kathleen 