Writing by Daniel Delfs. Illustration Berenika Murray.
When a heart beats against the borders of being
An energy artificial or internal, sinful or sublime
Transmuted
Tearing through skin
A skipping step
To the musical poundings of possibility
Momentum wrenches the lifted leg violently onwards
But the boundary of bone, blood, flesh, and nerves
Precariously battered into place by a burning star
Cannot join the wind
And those mangrove roots
Fed by sweet murky waters and many-toothed amphibians
Tether firmly to the ground
As much as they may shake and tremble
At the dissonant poundings of possibility
Yet in loving compromise with the pungence of burnt rubber and singed hairs
That grand network of roots does shake the dirt and begin to twist
A writhing of such release that the origins of this passion are forgotten by the first rotation
That fixed spot on the wall is useless as our heads spin
What was that about the eye of the storm?
Let me trade the blue of yours for the brown of mine
And our tearing will replenish the marsh that rises as vapour around us
Hope the fish won’t mind the dry spell
Point our mismatched gaze at how they flounder
In the drowned cries of possibility.
The winds are high, gale force prods and pounds the pavement,
Claws rip unthinkingly
Shake the walls, pressure mounts, a talon caught in the lock, the door flung open.
Popped ears. shattered tension - the raw nerves of broken glass
Lay buzzing now
In wilful disarray
The spinning top meanders, falters, and topples
In a limp heap
Tugged by a homebound tide
Tumble dried by sympathetic zephyrs
A broken form delivered to the waiting atoll
Coral bathed in moonlight
Your pieces will be whole by morning light, of this day or the year that follows
So slumber soft and sectioned
The skin that mends remembers, anticipates
That pounding of possibility