Marlo Bester-Sproul
How you looked before I was born
It is not that you are unrecognisable, just so far removed.
Decades have passed and the filter still softens your edges -
in spite of the uniform. Your lips, arrested and slightly split,
seem pregnant with expectation.
That black and white world I imagined you tricycling through
is not here. Grey nuzzles your cheekbones,
sweeps your high forehead and makes all
of your eighteen years more serious.
Your hands, buried forever beneath the frame,
curl like doves. And in your own back-yard, there is a mine
with your name on it. There is a canary chirping away.
Instead, you carry a clarinet and wear a hat
with no light to tell time by. Somewhere, in the not too distant future,
there is a plane circling a cracked sky at dawn.
And there is the winter I was born. I see you blowing your hands, tugging
your parachute, already envisioning
the white clouds burgeoning over your head. Praying
the cord would hold.
Page(s) 35
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