body work

xi: mea lavandula mercurius

**tw's: sui ideation & attempt mentioned, ed behaviour mentioned, body talk, talk of death, birth & labour**

the woman in the bed next to me
confronts her girlhood with rage,
pulls down the curtain pole
& i am sent away.

some days or weeks after,
she sits on her bed &
swings her feet right
over the edge. we cannot
sleep & so she tells me why—
we stay up & she talks all night—

we laugh, like it has not been
3 days gone since she
wrapped that girlhood
around her throat.
& wept
& wept
& wept & choked—

or maybe it was only
2 days, or perhaps 4—
i am not really too sure,
about anything anymore.
i have stared at the ceiling for
some time, sometimes
envisioning a noose to be tied.
mostly counting footsteps
of visitors & claiming
them as mine—

it's on one of these hazy days,
she gifts me a sprig of lavender
& says what i already know—
that it will help me sleep
if put under my pillow—

& this is when i know that i will
always be this well
& i that will always be unwell—as

i immediately thought of
placing it over my ear, you
see, i still thought of your
mind, as a child
in the churchyard,
& all the other places i had
no right to be.
i couldn't stop thinking of you,
i could not stop

the girl, she has gone home
now, to approach womanhood,
in a way where she is not misunderstood—
the lavender helped her
help herself—she was,
or is, or will be, a friend—
though i am yet to remember
how to talk to people again.

i made her a card before she left,
drew nondescript flowers &
reminded her she was blessed—

under whose sainthood?
that remains unknown,
but somewhere
where her children
can always be her own / childhood

worries that mothering is
no longer hers now
that they are grown—
i want to tell her youth is
simply just one way to atone.

mikhail, her namesake,
who guides her the most, he
casts out the dark
in a way only he knows — tell me,

do i dance on the hilt of
his spear? all this blood
loss & my skin is not yet pale—

i used to weigh myself
with a certain fervour,
like i was archangel
mikhail himself, weighing
deeds on the scale—all
i knew is that i was the sin in its entirety
& wanted it gone, the whole of me.
& this

was real pain. when i almost
died all those times &
had to crawl to the other side,
i could not fathom
how to smile & my
mother praised my
hands for looking
thinner & fragile—

until they were smaller than hers
& then she wore purple most days—
& then & then & then
it became rage–coloured
panels of glass–stained art—
hurled at me, just her pure devotion–
struck straight in the heart, but how
dare i express any emotion.

this happened years ago
& yet is always happening—i am
left unchecked & some
diluted shade of blue, like the
hue of the shadow of spring—
that comes around the
same time as the lavender twigs—

it reminds me that
i should have died on
that field, running barefoot.
at 18, of age & of no age at all,
i thought that frolicking
was childlike enough
to make me feel a certain way—

that i had learnt from
others to say that of course
i knew it the same—
some senseless joy
that comes with youth, the head-rush of knowing that your father
loves you—

but it did not come, because
we were adults & had to say goodbye.
looking back, that truly
felt like the only time
we did it right—
was that the chin on the head
or the arms wound tight? it's
harder to remember these days.
there are so many endings on
just one page—all

i want is to fall into the lavender
plants & wake up back there.
this time i would say
i know we are adults & have to say
goodbye, but please tell me
how your mother got those kind eyes?

& i think you would have
adored that & would have
trailed the map of your mind
to tell me how those hands
that held your father's,
your brother & then you,
sat weaving stars into stories &
that was your youth.

or
maybe you would have known
that would make me cry—so, instead
you would sit me by a river,
cross your legs &
say that her eyes are like mine.
i would have taken that lie.

i am hiding behind these
bracts instead, all this indigo
grief & i cannot pick
at something else. if you
posed the question back to me,
i would have told you with all
honesty—

how the mother labours
with the umbilical cord
wrapped around her own neck
& births herself, a violet bruise
smeared around the legs—

grainy feet, slipping &
sticking over the edge &
that first whimper is a smoky sound,
then louder & longer, the first ٱسْتِغْفَار allowed. that heavy
stench of copper will always stick
around—in fact, i can
smell the worst of it now.

—i don't know
what you would say. why do i
need you to tell
me what you would say?—

& in my lack of sleep,
my brother comes to me &
tells me about that loneliness
that comes with having
a threat for a body &
a half-moon for a mind. see
how your limbs fail & flail to
grasp at the quicksilver
falling from the sky?

& my sister tells me that to
parent is to fetch
& empty pails of water
from deep within that well,
back & forth like sisyphus
except the boulder is yourself—
call it womb,
call it worship,
call it home or hell — where
your children are your own
childhood & still, their
feet dangle over the edge.

& i tell them i need sleep tonight
& that now we are adults
& have to say goodbye.
i'll miss you. i want you to sleep well.

i still have that sprig.
though i fear touching it now,
perhaps i should
preserve it somehow.
i picked it up today
& gently placed it next to me.
it has been left to wither
& dry,
it never found my ear,
not to say i didn't try—

the scent is muted &
we are both the same—
a slip of a thing rendered
worthless by use & by you

tell me how i differ in needing
to be told how
i am safe, how i
am loved, & how i
deserve to grow old—

so, i hold it close,
breathe it in & let it tickle my nose.
someone says mercury in retrograde is why the time is passing slow.
someone else swings their feet
over the edge & decides to let go.

i just miss you. i want you to sleep well.
there's a sad-looking sprig of lavender left lying on the bed.