Anatomy

The strange return to solitude’s waking siren
Songs of silence, serenity,
Borderline with my atoms at the shore’s divine
Waning crescent
I’m present in my bare anatomy.

Take me apart,
Bones unbound to the flesh
Dissect every layer to arrive at the harbour
Where trauma rests
Nestled in the safety of sacred armour

Awareness is all I have on offer
Anger fills up the horizons behind me
With none but meaningless fodder
Show me where I went wrong, Father.

In the distance, memory of mother
The simmering frustrations rising
Foundations of a painful bubbling under
Outbursts long over due, hurled at a brother.

It could have been my first lesson
I sat in the corner of that class
Watching the chaos unfold at last
She sets free a wail that stings even the sweetest honeybees.

Decades later, perched in front of her dresser
The mirror reflects her wounds
Except it’s me who now cries at the depiction
With a heightened pressure
As I should have expected.

Anatomy,
The intersection of living gravely out of body,
The culminating void-filled anxiety,
Sweeping over, labouring and sorting stones
In my mother’s ancient quarry.