Poetry

Leaving Home

I return home

in each speech i make myself known.

It sleeps in the gaps in my sentences

till its woken by connotation,

and i stare at a pair of curtains,

convinced they were my own.

I carried you with me for what felt like forever,

knew the steps that crept

into the bathroom and brought

the morning, knew the sound

of dad descending the stairs,

sick with slumber,

always earlier than me.

Its true you can’t choose which

parts of you past

make up your experiences. 

I can taste its stale reasoning,

as it conditions my behaviour

and shapes my tounge

into regional tangs

of speaking honestly

with the people

i choose to let near.

My present is in constant

re-negotiation with my past.

That shared beginning

shades the difference

between myself as a child, always young,

dressed for school,

and the me which stands in the living room,

looking at my photo

thinking i used to look scruffy.

I try and imagine being that small,

all wrapped up by the world.

I can remember

first hearing rumours

of trouble in dads stubble;

First, I learnt how to carry it and

let it settle on my bones,

until I couldnt stop its sharpness

bursting through my skin like teeth,

chewing my routine to pieces. 

Later I’d learn how to spend time alone;

listen to a cd player

try and talk the 60s

into love and peace

and find yourself in a dream,

somewhere slowly becoming.

Leaving there, left little to hand

nothing weathered

with fingerprints

black from ink and 

greasy from food;

These things used to be

so busy with the day,

i knew their place without thinking.

I sat under its embrace,

kicking my feet against the floor.

Now I am gone,

I imagine the sound of a key turning and

people walking through its doors,

and i am not there,

to leave an empty cup,

or a cushion messy

with sleep.

I am elsewhere,

still finding mornings too early,

but now my own steps;

announcing the bathroom floor.

While Walking

The night tore the sky

into petal and stone,

caught the pavement

chasing our steps

from darkness to home.

You know that at times like these

we see each other much more clearly.

The lightness of each breath

while lost in a conversation

that touched the heart of things.

I wish i could reach into your head,

and caress that part of you

that thinks you are not enough,

that paces through metaphors

of hands and dust, and

finds the morning an unlikely

calling to rise and find the day.

I knew these things too,

had let them struggle with sleep,

till i could not speak

for fear of letting go.

I wish i could show you

what this meant,

instead of imagining myself telling you

thinking you owe me an answer.

It would be too cold to always

shape everything into a yes or no,

I am not a question,

and we are no equation

that waits in letters

to be resolved.

I hope it does not matter

i didnt say all the right things,

occasionally sat, grey as stone,

ironed into a tone

that let you know nothing.

I need this to mean more

than us merely existing.

It is everything i believe in.

I think I'm sorry

Please don’t fade so far,

don’t retreat into that dark,

where people fall into sleeping lines,

and evaporate at dusk.

I tried to hold onto your features,

but they smoothed into silent photos

who don’t talk but mouth

words I can not place. 

Your house used to be many things,

a collection of impulse and thought.

Belts, snowglobes and carpets all bore your mark. 

Now, scattered in the foreign pockets

of your closest strangers,

they are closed to their functions,

open for new discussion.

I watched time unlock your existence

piece by piece,

and slip from my hands

as things I'd never known. 

I exchanged memories for tears,

till grieving had done enough forgetting.

It was not suddenly feeling only your warmth

that brought damp eyes to settle. 

It was forgetting you had ever been there.

Yet it felt like betrayal to not miss your smile,

or hear your voice looking at your tired tools.

I think I miss you still, at least feel the space you left.

I think Im sorry.

Joe Kriss