Double Bind
| As the glass is singing, I have forgotten how to talk. White light is falling through the window, colouring a room. Beyond it is something like life, where a cow’s hide unravels at its hooves, where my ghosts rest in the bare branches, spectral wallabies. In the crease of the day, I’m not ready to tease them down. Why not see the world like this? There are only so many ways to photograph a hand to show, what, age like a worn soap? You can only write for two hours a day, and then? As the grey colours swim in, my voice grows birdlike, it hardly mists the glass. I stopped on the way to meet you, thinking how my words are stuck, extra rows of teeth I am neglecting to clean. Walking back through all those gardens with animals buried under trees, their autumn music, their throats melted. Strange to see myself in this black window, as I think of the first thing I will hear tomorrow, the gulls and the white noise. Everything I can see now is drowning itself out, giving the room back to itself. Your voice is reflecting in the air, held in the developing picture, these words. |
