Pippi Jean
A visit
Out into the living room at eleven
I see my two old friends asleep
on folded arms, like a visit
from another time.
Our window makes the city wider
than it is on the outside,
and dark, everything dark, like elbows
to the ribs, or floorboard runways
of stained glass
inside a house
on top of the island.
Reaching quietly for the door
on the other side of the island.
I walk in two places
until the house disappears.
Until the sea lies flat in the harbour,
my love lies down in my arms.
I understand where you are
and where I am. I understand.
The distances
Sometimes the distances grow.
Against the wall, under the table,
my shoe between your shoes.
The waiter brings us a candle and
the little lights surface on your face
like bottom-of-ocean patterns.
You search me out through
all of them. A fire engine
parks and stops on the street,
scattering silent red in
from the windows.
Even though I’m here,
I’ve only been here eleven years.
And I’m thinking of running to
the other side of school
to look at the moon
on the water. Going to sleep
against the shallow breaths
you leave on my neck.
Paint on the field lifts off,
starts to glow,
like lines on a runway.
I’m being followed home tomorrow
by the same small series
of scaffolding-birds.
Months of tying my shoes
at your place. The laces get greyer and looser.
Mists rise in waves
over the railing of your balcony garden,
between trees, and the sky overhead of them
goes green to blue
in the really early morning.
Sometimes I make you unsure
if you’re welcome. I’m sure I do.
You look at me
in between the distances,
through time, the rest of my life,
your scarf and beanie off, your hair
fraying red. You packed
an extra pair of undies
and the same pair of jeans. I’m
always acting like that’s surprising.
When my feelings are good to me
it takes me ages to realise the ways.
You look how you do now
while we go to sleep,
your fingers down my back
like disappearing seawalls
while you hold me backwards.
And there’s this crumpling
in my chest like you’ve
fallen through me and
suddenly you’re there,
standing with your bike
by the side of the school,
the moon out, over the ocean.
The world like a big huge umbrella,
opening and starting
to close.
Pippi Jean is twenty-one years old and an editor of Symposia. She recently graduated university and is now floating around in the air like a dust mite.