Burnt aubergines
You come back again,
with blades attached to your eyes,
with an eraser floating
beneath your soul.
Carrying aubergines,
you arrive at my door.
Your gift is as bitter as your scent,
as random as the memories
you now resent.
Your voice,
as dizzying as your core.
And I watch you expand.
By the time you step in,
you are seeping through my hands.
You expand
like the stories you would tell,
like a bipolar cell,
like a Damascene cloud.
Which part of my map
have you not smudged, my friend?
Which part of my earth
did you leave unploughed?
Or perhaps you are here
to take back the one thing you left behind.
A cross fashioned
from the shrouds of your god,
moulded with shame,
fastened with cogs.
Vividly ruthless.
Intangibly kind.
Suffocatingly aware.
Legally blind.
A cross bequeathed to you
by those who took turns
shattering their fists
over the child’s mind –
a beautiful, tender mind –
the mind I tried to comfort,
as your blades cut through mine.
Or perhaps you are here
to take back the one thing,
the only thing,
you left behind.