i’m writing to say everything is well (almost).
writing to say that purgatory is a sonnet if you find a way out of it.
i’m writing to say i miss the pōneke skies of that 2015 in all
their hues of blue and grey, that i miss seeing your face
in the hospital corridors, that i miss seeing your face.
that i’m glad you saved your own life, so at least we had
eight more years. that i went back to pōneke but it turns out
what makes a place is not the place at all. i swear that sometimes
i hear you say my old name, and it sobers me. no one else could
make it tender, but you. no one else could get me out of purgatory
with only the ghost of them. and i’m writing to say everything is well,
(almost).
i’m writing to say i think i’ve finally found it.
what we were looking for when they put electrode stickers
on my brain and shocking it, what they put you on cocktails
of medicine because you could not find.
i’m writing looking back. pain is almost beautiful
once you’ve killed it. look at what’s become of it.
everything. look at this version where icarus is bathed in light
but not burned by it. see my hands, they do not wage war on me,
but they do miss you. see they’re reaching and writing.
see losing you when your life was beginning, really,
made me want to die / made me want to live.
see the pōneke skies were a mirror to these of tāmaki,
see somehow your ghost is still teaching me to crawl out into life,
see the guilt is a hat trick that ends with tenderness.
if you let it. a rabbit’s ear. a memory.
the prey becomes the prayer. the sobering becomes the sombre.
i’m writing to say purgatory spat me out and i’ve been on my knees
without you. but what once was a stance of repentance
is now a reminder to let the soft animal of my body love.
i’m writing to say the animal of it remembers, could never forget.
looks at the baby blue skies of summer and loves you.
looks at the place and searches for the people who will make me miss it.
looks at purgatory as a sonnet of grief that turned me tender as the flesh.
i’m writing to say the sun is beautiful but i promise not to burn.
to say i’ll live for the both of us because you taught me how.
to say, i hope that when i wake to the thick honey light, made
new again into the womb of summer, that it is a mirror to the otherside.
i’m writing to say i’m wondering about the view, is it beautiful,
over there?
is it as still and soft as we had hoped? is death a hat-trick?
does it reveal something tender?
you showed me how to love and then you taught me how to live.
i’m writing to say everything is well, so very beautiful,
light all through me, but i confess, i am still hoping for one final trick.
a sleight of hand. a joker that says after all this, it isn’t true.
you’re not dead. we could laugh out a whole evening over this
just like we used to.