Mist drenches the rooftops, painting a city
backdrop in smears of purple watercolour,
and it hangs the streets with air-force saris
too long to be part of the night. Sequins
twinkle like rain-blurred traffic lights
caught on the underbellies of swelling clouds;
they wait for release, for God’s thumb
to squeeze them out like wasted dishcloths,
and beneath it all, silence
waits in the alleys,
avoiding echoes.
She sees the city as more than harsh angles,
ups and downs, and windows, finger-marked to blindness,
(these nails are shaper than twenty-twenty)
and reflecting back eyes and stars. She sees
the drips sliding down the curbs and wonders
about gravity
and how the beaded rain magnifies
the city lights.
A ring of orange flickers
to the edges of a puddle, and she breaks the rim,
taking the cracked halo up in one hand.
In a backstreet bedsit a mother waits
for her angel to come home
from the neon darkness,
and a siren pricks the walls in red, bleeding
in parallel lines through the blinds.
Somewhere on the inter-city highway, her chalk lines fade
and turn into blurs of people and places –
the ones she was always too young to see
– and she tries to peel away the answers
from the histories the ground buries like bones
(but dust floats, too) as the sun rises,
allowing the city to find its colours again
while a mother’s hands fold a sequined scarf.
/wordvomityukkiness
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