Page 73 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II

Erica Wurth

Arcing Towards the Sun

Wandering through these stores, their strange, wasted

version of us everywhere, I can see how you were once a dancer,

like my mother, how you both still are, your long brown hands arcing

towards the sun. And for him. Whoever he was. And for the days you saw

in a vision once, now faded and gone, like a black and white photograph

you might’ve picked up as a girl, lost somewhere in the middle

of the dusty city you call now home.

Cold and Tired Wind

We moved quickly through the rain soaked streets, and I could feel

your long dark fingers on the back of my seat, in a stranger's car. Those hands

on the small of my back. Once, the heat of you and me reduced

to a few hours in this large, wet city.

We stopped in the street by the market, eating falafel with the other poet,

and you pulled a picture of your dark eyed child out of the pocket of your worn out jeans, a boy

who is now living as you did, without.

When it was time for you to catch a ferry I ran with you, down streets,

past a man begging, a large old drum between his legs, his eyes lighting up at us,

our white heat, asking you what you could possibly be doing with me.

We laughed and I asked you to wait, come back;

it was only to hand you my name in red, and you took it,

the years before stretching in the space between your hand and mine,

our fingers together like angry, delicate flowers

growing in a garden that waits in a secret cave somewhere underground,