Old Country
The piano does not stop
playing
the faces do not stop their
staring
but move from black and
white
to blue, green pink.
Behind black,
grey that does not speak,
but is not quiet.
~
A veranda wraps its way around
the blue paint of house,
hair is pulled backwards in braids
and swallowed under words that are both spoken and not.
Inside, the radio speaks and the table empties
heartbeats of breast bones
beat windows open
and in the centre of room:
empty tablecloths
empty palms
splayed thoughts and fingertips and the ends of braids.
The goodbye is never as easy as they dreamed it could be.
~
Hands split and dive into
chest
splitting ribs down their
centre
white bone, paddling the
air quiet.
~
As paper folded into
envelope,
he folds his hands into
soil,
levelling the spring with elbows,
he remembers kissing the top of her head in goodbye,
pulling her head upwards
and the grass that grew between split cement,
in splintered green fingers.
She will not stop looking,
knows the exact size of the buttons at his wrists,
buttons the size of her thumbs,
the sound of his step
the exact space he would take up standing
the space between his ribs.
Light splinters like fire
cutting through breath and sand,
she sheds her voice,
throat to sky
emptied of all sound,
her cheek bones spread themselves wider
as they speak of loss.
~
Resistance:
They do not begin
standing,
elbows whispering and
fingers,
she wears blue and black,
the colour of bruise
and
speaks with palms and shoulder blades thick.
~
Sepia-soaked hemlines
stain the middle of calves,
knees to chin in wonder
as her fingers fold themselves gone.
~
His suspenders divide his back in three,
his front in three
(and it is only a few cotton stitches
that keep his heart
from her hands).
~
Three women digging thick into morning
open palms in the direction of afternoon
"not yet", their wrists whisper
and they listen, fingers against ribs and kneecaps
"not yet".
Tagged: Contact Improvisation, Contemporary, Performance, ON , Toronto
