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I remember the first time your eyes met mine, 3am in the hospital ward, me on my side in the narrow iron bed, separated by a strait of red linoleum from you in your Perspex cot. I could have touched you, but instead I held your gaze, like a woman entering an arranged marriage who recognises that this is for life. I made my promise then: to love, of course, but more to listen and to watch. I knew I could not keep you safe inside, would have to let you make your own sense of waves of light, how lips dance patterns that form sounds that create meaning, or close to brush a cheek, or part for a lover’s tongue. I spoke, and found in your open eyes an answer.
A woman gives birth in a tree and I stand naked, wondering who I am. I’ve tiled my bathroom mermaid green
eager to create an image, present a scene of tasteful tranquillity. Two days of labour and a woman gives birth in a tree
hauls mouth to nipple in instinct-driven certainty. My mirrored face dissolves, distorts as if in pain as steam obscures these walls of mermaid green.
Her body splits apart, water laps her feet. My power shower stings and pricks my exposed skin. Sophia Pedro gave birth in a tree
a feelgood picture beamed across our TV screens ignoring thousands who lost everything. Was it right – to tile my bathroom mermaid green?
Helicopter blades crack overhead. I reach for cocoa butter, aloe vera cream. I’ve tiled my bathroom mermaid green. In Mozambique a woman gave birth in a tree.
First time away from home, New Brighton, 1971 and there’s mud where the beach should be. We practise developés and ronds de jambe share double beds four to a room, and that last night
her breath warms my neck as she whispers tales from her London dance school: what the boys wear under their tights, how she got on Top of the Pops, what she misses. I hug her and feel the trail of her fingers tickling the backs of my thighs circling my hips, pushing aside my bri-nylon nightie.
In the shelter of the candlewick bedspread we trace our bodies over and over mirror-writing, our hearts beating as fast as the wings of the swan at the window.
The mahogany furniture looms over us and we wonder what we’ve done.
A plume of water spurts to heaven outside the Divine Order of Seraphim and Cherubim where gold turbans and sunset robes congregate to clap hands in praise at the toddlers who’ve never known a beach dipping dirty Jellies in the kerbside swirl alongside a gaggle of preteen girls who stretch out fingers, shake droplets like diamonds from bony wrists as a white boy with no shirt loops his bike through the spray, one eye on the gum-chewing mums bending over pushchairs, revealing Calvin Klein thongs to the van drivers who share a smoke in front of the taramasalata factory and laugh at the young woman in the Ford Fiesta inching her way through a free carwash as the first boy racer leans on his horn and the Italian language students pour from their hostel to marvel at this fountain without marble and coo at pigeons feasting on Bombay Mix while we neighbours forget the sullen crush of the morning’s bus and pool stories far into the cool of the night.
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