By Dina Oktaviani
1
this season there was a time when i was obsessed to throw
a letter through your bedroom window.
i wouldn’t know if anyone was spread-eagled by your side
: ready to devour every message and threat.
my body has always hoped you would go out, go to the park, ride a bike
and collect the fallen leaves like autumn
in european poems and dramas.
my heart hopefully wishes your heart would pick mine.
2
during those hours, much too late to be called night,
you would just turn off the lights without drawing your curtains.
sometimes i wanted to tell you a story of the autumn that you’ve been dreaming about
like the european poems and dramas that you’ve been collecting
like fallen leaves on the streets.
i’ve been here
; feeling your mind beating in a different way.
don’t you die, my girl.
and don’t be insane.
3
i have rejected you
before any offer of love
turned into a clouded glass in the rain.
wearing only our house clothes
we make out in feverous weather—just an illusion like a magic show.
my heart, running to you
—just a memory of a child among the splashes of rain
and the thin rays in the back garden.
together, each one waiting between
geometry and agoraphobia.
standing—and that would be all.
4
when you came, my womb had been unloaded,
my breath was torn in two and the cheap beer i’d been trying again and again to immortalise
spilled out into a puddle and it reminded me of the smell on your old jeans.
my other breath was asking you to come inside and straighten up
the sketch of a girl sleeping between someone’s knees.
my true breath was stiff, waiting.
then the puddle was dried out by the weird wind.
5
when i came, your eyes were dark,
your dry colorful skirt was hanging in front of your house.
you had put on weight.
i knew someone was spread-eagled at your side
: ready with the “noes” and the “don’ts”.
no music except the classics.
rock ‘n roll and pop music which were as bad as the weather that day
were fading between your breasts.
(it’s out of the question waiting for what we’ve done.)
where was your radio?
6
somebody borrowed my radio.
our tv was broken and it was tough to find friends.
i love you.
but you’re hopeless.
7
survive, emily wrote a poem about this dead bird
that never pitied itself.
livingston made the seagull
learn to fly forever in his story.
we could have just loved you, o the past
that insists on staying.