Turn left at the stop sign

It left my body
like a slow release of cigarette smoke through parted lips.
I blink my eyes, life goes by in the blink of one.
The flame of the candle flickers,
Green wax and the hum of the heat in my ears.

We paint our souls so that they’re colourful,
we fill in the spaces where the air seeps through
those spaces that are black and white,
because everyone wants to be significant.

They told me: “If you’re grey on the inside
you’ll drift through life like a ghost on water with no reflection
and not even the moon will shine on you.”

I cry out into the night and my tears raise the ocean.
The world is heavy with sighs,
the ground heaves and shudders
and is dirtied by sand-stained feet.

I’m walking on the tired earth with a tired heart
with heavy arms and a stretched soul.
Invisible hands have pulled my head in a million directions,
and I have lost focus.

The tears and the hope and the madness have evaporated into the air
and formed clouds of quiet melancholy that hang over the earth
like dirtied sheets on a clothes line,
blowing back and forth in the wind.

Indifferent

He took my heart and looked at it
he cocked his head and furrowed his brow at it
he blinked his eyes and breathed his breath on it
he smelt it and pulled a face at it
he turned it over and examined it
he stroked it softly and handled it
he dropped my heart and stepped away from it
he looked down at it and contemplated it
his love was empty, I could see it
his hands were dirty, he wiped them on his shirt
he left my heart there on the floor where he’d let it slip
his hands were clean now, he’d made sure of it
And as long as he didn’t get too close again
he wouldn’t have to face it, he could forget about it
so he walked away from my heart, he turned his back on it
because sometimes it’s easier to drop a fragile thing
than it is to take take care of it