onhollowedlegs - Tumblr blog

[onhollowedlegs]

I did turn, and you were not there.

Eurydice.

[onhollowedlegs]

I stare glazed eyed at the wardrobe; jumpers, cardigans, shirts, ties. They all fold into one. Their blues, greys, browns and reds. Nothing seems right. It’s 20’past the hour… I’m late. I know this. But still I stare, with the shoes I’ve picked hanging limply in my hand. The birds humming softly in the lumpy morning air. Who am I today?

I pick the blue, and check my reflection: today I wear the skin of a man more confident that I feel, more outgoing - someone who is not me. The tie a noose around my feverish nape. Today I am not me, but the version they need me to be.

Somewhere within this wardrobe, behind the oranges and warm dancing yellows, is me. Folded neatly in two - one day I will find it.

One day I will wear my own skin.

[onhollowedlegs]

I wander through the trees and the leaves crackle beneath my feet, the wind tickles my bare skin. When I stand here, I know that I am in the eve of such gentleness, such wisdom: the pines, and the oaks, the sycamores and the Burch. I am at peace beneath their hollowed embrace. The birds sing to me here, as I walk through their home. This is where I let my heart rest, between the moss and the ivy soaked bellies of the damp soil. I am one; I am whole.

[onhollowedlegs]

The twenty-sixth moon passes with the bitter stars, they taste sour in my lungs. This day, I was never supposed to reach, feels blurry behind my eyes. I am in two halves, split between eighteen and now. The mirror holds who I ought to be, but my ribs gargle stories of who I once was; paralysed in a home where the candles were never blown and cakes lined shelves and not bellies. Yet here I am, in the womb of a year I’ve never been, and I am alone. A twin with no self - who am I, if not you? I have no home, no family or friends. I am surrounded by the worst parts of me, and all I see is the age of my bones as they turn to dust on the early morning breeze. I am staring down the face of twenty-and-six: who am I now?

[onhollowedlegs]

I wonder if we could have been free from the shackles of our own making - if it didn’t rain each day since St Swithen…

Would the yellow bellied plums have tasted the nectar that dropped from our tongues, in the eve of the sun…

Would winter not hold in her breasts the sting of the orange moon…

Would our words not have buried themselves in the hollow pit behind our eyes, and gargled in our bones…

We could have been more if we dared to be… if our soft bellies didn’t eat ours wanting hands whole.

[onhollowedlegs]

The world fell around my sodden feet and I blink into a life and people I do not recall. I feared you’d answer, I feared you’d call and I would have to tell you that the moon swallowed itself whole and tore the light it gave in pieces. It is not what you think. Not him.

But her.

The one who shared an umbilical,

Who brought life into this world - and I along with it.

She became the one who shed blood in our wake, whose hands landed on fallen tears.

It is the twin I now do not know.

This is the only way I can reach you -

A call to the wind.

And as she settles behind bars of her own making,

I fear that you will call.

[onhollowedlegs]

We bleed out of synch, as the hands reach for the time we never grasped tight enough.

You yearn for the decades since past, the one dripping in orange dew drops and blue roses. But we have grown, stripped from the womb to bear witness to the passing of lives, not our own.

You took solace in my misery - in the demise of my quaking form. As the ground swallowed it whole and not a worm was left to feast upon. You buried me deep within your soul and bridged a horizon elsewhere and I was the one you pointed fingers to, when life was cruel and unforgiving in the face of true north.

I am not your enemy, but here I stand with sword in hand as dawn approaches.

I will not battle you any longer -

The sword will fall, and knees will bend.

I have stood here before - pleading my sorrows.

But you turn a blind eye to your own deafened ears and my words topple over the sand that laces my hands.

I am not your enemy - but your friend.

So why fight me as such. Why let the sun bring us here, where our hearts lay bare and chests heave in the silence linking us.

I am not to blame for your mistakes.

I am not to blame for your mistakes -

I am not to blame.