The weird feeling of childhood nights cuts through the thin air,
hanging sleepless between worlds
there is no resting place.
Furniture that was once mine,
silhouetted in my brain and in the dark doorway mouth.

I thought of the girl with her secret smile, and how in vanished,
and the odd contours of the young at night.
They can play tricks on us,
shape shifting into the background,
and their lips follow them into ashes, into a sky of void,
There are no directions except inwards.
No maps have traced these stars and I learn them on your knee freckles,
and in pagan rock circles.
As a child of heathens I’d hide in them,
invisible in mud face paint, angry letters etched in angry eyes,
for our war-dances,
savage rituals that leave you full.

And night spins together like the illusion of a bird trapped.
Grandmothers voice advice through the wallpaper, cracks deeper than the lines in her face.
She has not forgotten her shackles, her voice is hanging with rope.
I am her captive, but the world holds her into the house.
The bells there ring inward.

I wait for the break, the sound I know well,
from songs I would sing and mouth the words.
Only music leaks and leaps from the school yard,
and things that crawl up my spine fill me.
I dig them out and curl up in secret to read them.

You do not believe me, for I display my feathers like her mother,
a bluebird,
who lives in picture frames.
Stories tall as redwoods,
branching out to brush my face.
But I choose to sleep in nests, and let my eyes run black,
and burn my hands learning how hot water can grown before it turns to steam.

The vines holding us are human hair.
You do not mind it much and I only see you,
no reflection in the ripples.
I fall like a pebble and swallow them to sleep