Postcard From The Bedroom

I’m not quite sure why I hold that letter in my hand.
It’s probably the residue of the incident that grew up in the bedroom:
Cotton mixed with the conservative flesh of the shards of wood
that escaped from the mattress.
I think that’s what my sentences rest on.

You’d think I’d have forgotten by now how I couldn’t turn away
from the answer papers that flew into the balcony. The windows
had their mouths wide open to swallow them down to the street
that was already a big mess with the answers and questions
walking in and out of cabs and buses.

They flew with all the might they could pack into their suitcases
simply because they didn’t want to be witnesses to the coarse art
of applying violent shades of haemoglobin across Mother’s face.

They seemed to have had a better sense of self-preservation.
I, on the other hand, believed to be present in the here and now for better
or worse. Yes, you can tell, I had barely graduated from kindergarten
back then: The sentences are all raw, single-celled,
bathing in the ignorance that their ectoplasm kept them in.

I keep that letter in every nook I rent.
Some day perhaps, I’ll sit with it in the balcony
under the covers of a thunderstorm
and forgive its not knowing;
I’ll then go bathing for a thousand years
in the fact that I could hold myself—
Even after that which held me

Was gone.