Cousin

I remember you.
How strange it is that we should meet
here, after all those many years.
I remember that moment I followed you up the
cellar stairs.
Lifted from the cellar floor – I, we
crossed the mark and boundary-door –
then light eclipsed a childhood.
You were a catalyst to the half-broken
chewed up toys; the scum and foam
left by a tricky sea – that would
often salt-rake, wreck, and fill in
the belly of the cellar.
Crawling on hands and knees,
Bawling out our fantasy –
as if we made the world,
(but reality has thicker skin
and waits, so patient, to let us in
up there at the top of the stairs.
Breathing heavily.)
I wish upon those confused days,
when we would scrape rocks on our
skin; and turn, with joy, our innards
into toys – to squeeze, and spin,
coil around, often our own mouths
- to silence our minds infernal
din.
The green seaweed in your hair, the
black, oiled strands in mine.
Combing gently – eyes forgotten now
for touch, legs quietly lapped and hacked by water
Groomed by the bitches of imagination
- furies ripe for birthing.
Cruel ritual never felt so worthy.

I remember you – your eyes, now
here in this warm, unthreatening,
room – so far beyond the reach
of salt-cuts and earth.
I wonder if in your dreams still lie
there – drip through your ear, to
crust and die here - like me.
Touching the scar left by a wounding
sea. A hand snagged on a door.
A small red shoe left on a cellar
floor.
But you are shinning: a glory to society; a public song-bird to our
family: we just talk practicality, of
commodity – reality.
And I think you killed the heart
of me: when we walked through that door.