Songs of Anisha
“The Manic Depressive Daughter,”
by Abigail George
(for my ‘Johannesburg’ family)
The furniture is there but it also isn’t there.
What I am seeing is not real. It’s
like the memory of water’s hiding
place inside a lake. Fire for eyes. Moth
wings for limbs. Milk flowing
through bones. All rage and sadness
standing at attention finding them
Instead of the fluid emptiness in a vessel. You are
my sun. All feelings shatter the sunset.
The dawn in ravishing intervals. You
have to see it the way that I see it. That
I am damaged. That the people I have
loved have damaged me. My face, the
Reflection in the bathroom mirror, is a
Museum. It speaks volumes. Grief is
like silence. It has its own soul. I only
had to learn how to love myself and
then all this sadness would end. Rage
would find the exit out. Some escape.
This voice within me has no ending, only
a beginning. You’re asleep so you don’t
remember. The stillness that came
after the hunger. The forest. The earth. Gravity.
Most of all the red path of the volcano.
Haunted, so the night swimming began
in earnest. I used water to trace vertebrae.
I praised asylum. I exalted the keys that came
with freedom. I was a fossil but knew
nothing of choice. I knew what touch
was and in the end longing for it almost
destroyed me. In the end I tried to live up to your
expectations.
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