from the moment i was born, the tap had been switched on and the water had been running for years and years. i slipped out of my mother's womb wrapped in amniotic silk and blood and tumbled into my little plastic red bucket, and my father flipped the shower tap on and started filling the pail with a rushing stream of warm spring water. there i marinated in their care- they added in milk powder and alphabet soup and waxy crayons, red and blue and green, then when the bucket threatened to split at the base from the brimming volume, they transferred me to a round jacuzzi tub, LED candles flickering at the rim, the classical music radio channel generating gentle surface ripples while hot bubbles burst underwater and wrinkled my skin, and when the bubbles started spilling out they heaved me into a wooden pail and lowered me into a wishing-well and tossed a few golden coins in every week. i concentrated and breathed hot air onto each coin, gleaming round metal discs turning to burning golden ooze dripping through my fingers, and i welded myself a small underground palace chamber, an inverse turret, sticking gold leaf to the walls and fashioning a gold ladder to the top of the well so that i could climb up rung after rung only to board up the entrance with planks and bricks, leaving a little hole for weekly money and for the constant stream of tapwater filtering into my rising well. i swam in algae and kelp, the same milky water recycled through my pores, marinating in a bath of gold and waste for years and years and years, only a slender pinkie-finger of sunlight stabbing through the coin slot i left at the top of the well to illuminate my aquatic home.
then you came one day. sawdust and wood chippings rained down into my seaweed hair on a humid mid-afternoon as i was stirring the murky water in my well. i looked up to squint at a bright jagged patch of grey-blue sky through my broken wooden boards, and a shadowy face looking right at me. hi, you yelled down, and your strong-bellied voice rang through my well, a multitudinal chorus of hi, hi, hi, hi, hi ricocheting off the walls like a sheet of arrows whipping through my soul and quaking the water. i dove underwater and held my shaking breath, but my floating tendrilous hair betrayed me as it waved back at intruding you at the surface of the water. you took it as an invitation to set foot onto my self-made ladder, the one that i built to reach the top only to shut the world out, and started climbing down into my well. i clawed at the floor of the well, but i had melted a layer of gold over the brick surface, and my breath could not so much as warm the temperature of this layer locking me out of my escape, a cloud of weak bubbles disappearing against the wretched shining surface i had made with my own stupid hands. i saw my misty reflection in the gold floor for the first time- a kelpy sea witch, blubber hanging off the sides of her frame, black urchin hair in a wild aquatic dance above a bulbous goldfish face, an inner mandarin glow at the skull, embryonic shadow swimming in the hollow, blue veins embossed on the filmy skin glued onto a horrible bloated green face, scarlet eyes bulging out of their sunken brown sockets. i balked and screamed, a jetstream of bubbles erupting from my throat, and i shot back up, breaking water.
at the same time, there was another splash! a sprinkle of water doused my yellow-green skin, and a voice lower than mine spoke into my right ear: whoa, cool place. it had no scratchy husk like mine, but came forth strong and smooth and with confident, brazen wonder pitched an octave lower than my feminine register. there were now two sources of disturbance in my stale water, two colliding ripples slowly smashing against each other and curling horizontally away from their impact, merging as one semi-linear surface form- unification in opposition. i stared at the treachery the water surface betrayed in becoming one with the intruder's marked presence, furiously gunning him down with silent curses in my head.
sorry for barging in on ya, he said, then magicked the audacity to grin and bare a twinkling set of straight white teeth at me. i wanted to lunge forward when he least expected and knock those perfect teeth out, snarling at him with my own pointed gappy yellow fangs. you hardly did, i growled through gritted teeth, and the water trembled in support. this was my home and my grave, and he had dived right in and confiscated my soul's rest.
he managed to stretch his smile even more into the wrinkled depths of his accursed face. it's just that you had closed up the top, so i opened it up for you. it looks like you've been here a long, long time.
because i closed it up to keep people like you out, i spit out angrily, but only in my brain. in external reality, i say, uhuh.
well then... he put his L-shaped fingers to his chin and tilted his pupils to the sky now visible and let the tip of his pink tongue slip out through his lips. after a few seconds he clapped his hands together and the smack rebounded off the brick and into my ears like a slap to the face. this place looks like it needs a little grooming, you know, a little renovation, if you may. we can scrub down the brick to remove all the algae and mould, and polish the gold so you can see your gorgeous reflection in it- nice touch, by the way, did you do it yourself? then we can move on to heavier stuff, id est, expanding the square foot area- hm, that would mean knocking down the walls... but first things first: may i freshen your bath up?
no! i said, this time bordering an actual shout rather than at the mumbly volume i usually kept.
pleeeeeeaaaaase? i'll just get rid of all the gunk and grime and make it look (and smell) a whole lot prettier. he turned to me and contorted his features into a woeful glassy-eyed gaze of imploring. i looked away in disgust.
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you drew circles in the water, clearing a meandering path where the epidermis of lilac rose petals and brilliant ultraviolet foam parted at the brim of your tracing finger and the steamy colourless bathwater was unveiled in liquid scribbles over my sunken shipwreck legs folded and corspelike at the bottom of the tub, nauseating yellow-green flesh strapped around two short femurs, little curls of hair growing as weed-shoots from the mottled skin. i looked away from my stubby pudgy hairy legs with pure disdain. i hated them. i felt the excruciating impulse to dig my nails into the underneath of my toenails and with a great big yank strip the entire meat off my pale leg-bones bubbling up in my stomach and drumming at my heart, so i took your winding wrist and paddled at the petals and the bubbles with your limp palm to blanket my underwater body with a shield of soap and other pretty bath-paraphernalia that you had put in for me to admire and to play with.
what's wrong? you whispered, your earl grey breath warming my left ear, and i felt my face steam up like a kettle.
please don't, i said, staring resolutely at the shower tap and not your massive twinkling pupils that were raking the side of my face up and down. you've already done so much for me. this has been so lovely and soothing and so, so beautiful. but i don't want to see what lies underneath. i clenched my invisible sunken toes, wishing to feel the prick of my toenails on the balls of my feet, but they were too short to curl over enough to reach the callous skin.
well... your damp fingers found my creased chin and gingerly tilted my head to face yours. your eyes were swirling galactic hot tubs of their own when i first came in, i already caught a glimpse before you let me add all this. you gestured, with a sweep of your hand, at the shifting holographic purple surface of water drifting aimlessly and glittering lavender. there's nothing to hide from me.
i wilted into his fingers, and his arms snaked their way from being at his sides to around me. we held the silence for a while, nothing but the clean warm water lapping at our bodies.
from the moment i saw you, i thought you were the most beautiful being in the universe. i truly believe you are a gem too precious to be kept from the rest of the eyes of the world. it would be my only wish to bring you out and let everyone see who you are.
i said nothing, listening to the water slosh back and forth, back and forth.
please, darling. you can't stay in here forever.
he pulled away, and the water swept along with his departure from my waist. looking me in the eye and holding my hand, he pulled me to the ladder i had welded so many years ago, and began to climb, tugging me along. we climbed and climbed and climbed, and he said, wow, i haven't been to the surface in years since i stayed down here with you, and i still kept quiet.
YOU ARE READING
i'll never be a poet
Poetryand here's the pretentious proof an ongoing anthology of the poetry of nobodi.
