Leaving Behind Bullets

i. This house has plain ceilings. Plain ceilings are hard to recognize. On some mornings, when I wake up, I forget that I am home.

ii. My mother worries like there is always a war outside our window. It smells like coffee every time she says my name.

iii. The parapet outside the local supermarket has been vandalized by our after school stories. We don’t know the colour of the spray paint anymore.

iv. She is cross legged on the side of my bed. When she talks about space, it sounds like the inside of her head.

v. I count my blessings in conversations with you. My arms get cold without yours but you make sweaters with your laughter. I write “our love has superpowers” on a stolen sheet of paper, and leave that sentence incomplete. (I never know how to shut up when I bring you up, even when my words get gaudy and have to be shoved in between brackets.)

vi. Next month, there will be strange bodies sitting under a tree that reeks of lemon tea and someone else’s memories. I have run out of things to wrap my education with.

vii. My brother breathes out words like he’s a wind chime. The rest of the family speaks like we are spitting bullets even when we are saying “i love you”. You can see the gun powder residue all over the living room walls.

viii. This place stacks upon itself like an awkward teenager afraid of taking too much space. Some days, I wonder if I am falling or if the city has learnt how to fly.

ix. When I was a little girl, I thought my father was a magician because he could turn his poetry into people. I worry that I will never be able to make my people poetry.

x. I think of you on every terrace and under every rooftop. You taught me how to fall in love without falling apart. I don’t name my pieces anymore.

xi. I no longer remember how to be lonely.

Will we ever learn to leave without leaving behind?

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