The Day After I Killed Myself

Mari de Beer

The day after I killed myself,

the neighbour still kissed his wife on the deck before he left for work, your car still had the smell

of spilled milk on the back seat from the day when all my questions arrived, mother still sat solidly

in her chair with the new crochet pattern she tried to copy, the baker on the corner of the next street

still closed his doors at noon and motionlessly stared at the sky, the blue and white delft your

mother inherited still glared at me from behind the locked glass panels of the cabinet I never

wanted.

The day after I killed myself,

the clock which father brought home from the place we never asked about still ticked the seconds

like mother’s anxious breath, the silent cavalier still laughed behind his curled moustache and

elaborate costume with his belittling gaze, the bathtub still collected messages, the entrance hall was still dormant, the rats still whispered, the house was still dark, and the bathroom clammy and the

toilet seat still stained.

The day after I killed myself,

you still walked with someone else’s feet leaning against the wind, the other woman still floated in

the gloom, the showerhead was still high enough for the way your shoulders were shaking, the

hands still scratched at the flesh under the flaking skin, the skeletons still hung from the trees in the

driveway, no one left and no one came, and the wounded eye was still me behind the door.

The day after I killed myself,

I left the bed on the pavement, like a whore.

2020

Featured at the Red Wheelbarrow on 3 February 2022

Watching

Lisa Julie

I was always intrigued by everything you did with your hands

How reluctantly you removed them from your pockets like a boxer with bruised

knuckles

How you’d study your nails looking for bits of skin to bite off

How you’d tuck away your thumbs like a nervous child

I always wondered why you wore two pairs of latex gloves to pull out strands of

entangled hair from your own bathroom drain

Featured at the Red Wheelbarrow on 27 January 2022

Last night I dreamt you left me for another man

Stephen Symons

Someone calls

as clouds dull

to the colour of a dead tooth pink threads of day linger and then unravel without warning within the breath of this instant thoughts die as quickly as they take flame swallows switch and glide

wings dusted

with the ashes of last light beaks stuffed with

invisible insects inside a kettle boils away the sadness of a kitchen on a Sunday evening a window perspires condensing time to a chart of deltas and tributaries that trickle to the bottom of the frame

to one of those irrelevant points of focus that coaxes the mind to wander off a cliff last night I dreamt you left me for another man and my heart became a cupboard of small cups overflowing with the sawdust of my dream the kitchen and its shapes and smells curdle to a dread planet thickened by egg yolk and roughened by black crumbs of toast the swallows have long since

abandoned their prey a bat scatters beneath a streetlight a moth tempts fate and that thought of you in the arms of another man finds the flowers on the kitchen curtains

and combusts

Featured at the Red Wheelbarrow on 20 January 2022