AMY MARGUERITE
Managing isolation
Today we spoke through glass. I couldn’t say
who was in the fish tank: you, or me?
Or was the tank an unmappable ocean
seducing us from the outside in and revealing
a new depth for our bodies to inhabit?
It is impossible to tell just by looking
at a jellyfish how it is feeling, whether it is weeping or
smiling or getting ready to sting. This encounter was
not so different. You were not so transparent
as the glass letting me see you, and I would really like to
fold my leaden limbs around your thin frame again.
I would love to hold you and not worry
for the first time. I really need you to know
that these fourteen days will draw more blood
than any rumour. I picture myself under covers.
I picture my cells contracting. I picture us splitting
the holy water, wringing until it is useless.
I picture the days thawing like morning
mist on a window: quickly to begin, then slowly,
more effortfully, as they’re being watched.
A disappointing piñata
Everything she is
I am not the world
has twelve
hundred fingers
none of them
are green none
have ever touched me
except in the wrong way
there are layers &
layers of lint
beneath my nails my father
is paranoid
about the dryer
exploding sometimes I
light up inside
when the wind
makes my leg
hairs tremor
like unlicked candyfloss
in bed my lover
wants to scissor
through the gale
force she needs wrapping
paper to unmend
I don’t
know how to tell her I
am not that sort of
celebration
Stalling
All night I had you. I went to press
a warm thumb against your eyelid
this morning but when I rolled over
my greyhound huffed a grand huff
at my jawbone . . . . . . . . . Bitch
breath dandelioning my dreaming
. . . . . . . . . I keep thinking . . .
about apologising for not holding
your left hand when my right one
was stupidly clammy with unavoidable
logic. But my hand was probably
joking. My limbs suspend disbelief
more willingly than a July-born
hypochondriac humming the lyric
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
while drafting their seventeenth will.
I’d carve out spare time to put you
in one of my wills because it’s queer
as fuck to compliment your slayer . . .
but quasi-regretfully I’ll have you know
(before anything gets too unserious)
that I don’t have spare time for spare
time. I’m too busy wondering what now
we would be in if I had let my wine-
dry lips scutter . . . crabwise . . . . . .
down your cheek. But wondering is brutally
futile & an apology is the equivalent
of a kiss & I WOULD much rather
KISS YOU if I couldn’t see myself
apologising for it later . . . . . . & anyway
the Bullock Track is a jealous gradient
& no place for a moment really . . .
but I wouldn’t have minded
pissing off a few Uber drivers if it had meant
stalling our . . . situation/ship . . . ?
into some sort of phantasmagoric
lesbian devotion . . . ? . . . ?? . . . I mean
I keep getting emails saying my
Dropbox is full & I don’t know how
to add more storage . . . I mean us
is taking a fucking manatee gestation period
to download . . . . . . & . . . well . . .
I’m deleting my cat pics for you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amy Marguerite (she/her) is a poet and creative non-fiction writer living in Aro Valley, Pōneke. She has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at Te Pūtahu Tuhi Auaha o te Ao, IIML. Her work can be found in NZ Herald, Stuff, Salient, Food Court, Salty, Milly Magazine, Poetry Shelf, Bad Apple, Sweet Mammalian and on her blog margueriteamy.wordpress.com.