Noise
(Diastic poem)
Longing for your noise.
Crick-cracking down the passage.
Clanking a door.
Your deep, gentle voice
trawling by the river.
If only you were.
Bleeps overcame you.
Big hands released the jangle of the leash.
The last time
big hands soothed my forehead.
If only you were.
Slurping your tea,
your knees and feet clicking.
Noisy you – never treading gently.
Sleeping to your piano clinking hands.
If only you were.
Today
The day you went away;
the pages remain.
Music disturbs the mood of today.
No hold on last year
from today.
Does this mean goodbye?
My stomach knots with fear’s noise.
No more last year. No more you.
The dripping drama in me today.
Adrift today.
Admit today.
This One Year.
Alterations
I stand next to her at the garden fence and I’m fenced by her.
“My daughter’s being silly! She’s just sulking because she saw Jean Claude, the tiler, make a pass at me.” Her mocking, lying words to the architect cut through me. I stand, muted by her, my face hot and prickly. I’m rendered helpless. I have no words for my fear, my anger, my panic. Her words strip me, humiliate me, turn it around. I imagined what I’ve seen, I misread what I’ve seen. This is what she is really saying, but not to me – she doesn’t even give me that.
I know what I see. She is T-shirted, bra-less and striped: yellow, red, blue, orange and brown broad, horizontal stripes. As I watch, the side of her left breast squashes against the shower door, clear yet distorted. He wears grout-stained khakis. If it weren’t for the bright stripes, there would be no visible divide between their bodies. There is no visible divide between their lips. The glass is clear, there can be no doubt. Maybe if she and dad had chosen opaque, conventional shower doors then it wouldn’t hurt. I could question my eyes. But they’re there, in front of me, and they don’t stop. She knows I’m in the house and she doesn’t stop. I can’t say how long it lasts, but it is a twelve year old’s eternity. I have to walk away.
Later that day I notice bags of tile grout on the bathroom floor. One lies on its side, between the toilet and the shower, powder trickling slowly onto the cream tiles below. The bathroom is beautiful: a collection of flower imprinted tiles forming a huge arrangement on one wall; a cream bath set into a platform of tiles upon which brass pots would later house maidenhair ferns; a tall, elegant basin and counter top flanked by an ornate brass mirror; brass fittings everywhere and French doors to a courtyard beyond. A dream bathroom – all for me. Each tile is surrounded by pale, off-white grouting. From that day the grout would collect grime and the bathroom would feel ice cold.
I look towards the clear shower door. There is no evidence; no broken glass, no lipstick smears. I would forever be angry. I would never tell Dad – this one would lie in the rotten core of me. The world is no longer solid. I am not safe. I am not home. I am unhinged by a clear shower door.
That day by the fence, I hear the sound of hammers knocking away at bricks. Four bricklayers work outside the bedrooms. That makes five, counting the architecht. Five men who could easily have walked in on them, and one twelve year old daughter. Yet, she didn’t care.
I’ve seen. She takes away my family and leaves me with prickles in my face.
Fragments
“Maaaygan – Phone Five!” The screech is not sober.
Distraction is near.
Booth five is stuffy, smells of sweat and cobra.
My dad gives me the words to steer.
I sit down to write.
One hand holds my headful of sketches.
Me on a rock wearing silky piped shorts, all white,
and an orange string top. Flat chested.
The wreck’s boiler a sad and comical face
with a furnace nose and rusty eyes.
Oh, the adventures he conjures in that place:
boulder asteroid fields and shore plains of ice.
We walk through the hours on the beach,
as my youth and his mid-age leach.
I am mountain
I am mountain – still. But, look closely. I move.
I am alive in the tips. I move .
I am dead, burnt by the mountain fire.
Your ashes nourish my slopes. I move.
I lived from you. You live in me. I live because of you.
Flowers take root, birds take nectar. I move.
I am you. You are me. We are mountain.
I am Megan – strong and eroding. I move.
Fever dream
I try to morph your firm baobab presence
into the fluid acquiescence of the river.
I had flown to you, hoping we’d float. At least cling together.
Isn’t that what dads and daughters do?
I smash against you.
Waking that last night,
I hear you clank and boil.
I yearn to stay warm. I fear regrets.
I rise, and drink tea.
I slam into your fear:
your careful, warped plans;
your medication strategies
to quell the insane noise in your ear.
My water drains in terror.
I sit through the hours on a white couch
facing your white couch. Our last night
in the home we have known.
Bloody images on the screen nearby.
Listening to your considered ranting,
the prickles begin in my face
and they invade my body.
I long to weep
“Please help me Daddy”.
I try to be grown.
Please flow with me Dad.
Please let me flow when my time is here.
Please let me wake from this horror that is real.
I’m unhinged. My heart tears.
I crash. I flood. I dry up.
You stand immovable.
Afraid. Frozen.
Gone from me.
