when you say we didn’t get a winter this year
you told me you had bad genes
as if the crimes and misgivings of all the
men in your family had stuffed roots
into your back and bled into your family tree
i buy 400g bags of fortune cookies
to convince you that inevitability
doesn’t stick up your wounds like
salt and sea foam
the air inside the apartment smells
stale i hold my hands over
your chest searching for true north
i look for you like i feel for a tooth
that has already fallen out
i am building you a
bed out of shriveled pines
i am gluing them together with the
sap i find in their scales
but the pockets in your lungs
are stuck up with honey
and air erodes your oesophagus
cover the holes in your skin
with glad wrap
blubber with your tight lips
spill out of yourself.
i read instructions on lucid dreaming
i pray to the gods with varicose veins
tight around my ankles
with soap sticking up my gums
and cyanide in my teeth
i ask for hands to part the sea
to split it into sand and salty tears
i ask for clarity and all i get
is stained glass and bubble wrap
there are slashes in our fly
screen i can’t sow together
the drought left our garden
skeletal and barren. the bones
we scooped from the ground
left to rot and fall away
you hold the pomegranate in
both hands slipping seeds
under your waterline
its shell is dusty and dries
up your throat like cinnamon
i am shattered windows and
paint peeling doors
there is an unkindness of ravens
i can see it in their eyes.
remember the salt in your bones
dickens said we forge chains the
simple truths and rosy wine
mama said rice paper rolls are too thin
and that blurry oceans wait for no one
you become something yellow and
sticking the edge of a page that
curls up in on itself
something i call california
smear your hot skin with wax
burn these candles until they die
count your steps until there’s no more
pavement and your boots are
hot and worn through
peel the leaves off artichokes
tongue the gaps in the curtains
this turkey stuffed overflowing
this shattered compass and
these rotting leaves
something i call nova scotia
i lock the door in hopes it may
keep you out i open my windows
when my room smells too much like
you i drink salt water and fill my
gut with peach stones and clover.
Natalie Sakarintr lives in Melbourne, Australia. She is a Creative Writing major at the University of Melbourne. She spends too much time on public transport and is good at accidentally making eye contact with strangers for longer than socially acceptable. She can be found on Tumblr and Twitter.