No meal is complete without family
(for the Dutch poet Joop Bersee)

Love, how you taught me the bonds of family.
And how you sometimes held me close and kissed me.

    Leave the light on. Let it overflow this
    room. I want joy to fill my mouth.
    Somebody leave the light on. Draw the curtains as
the charming night falls all around us, mother.
    You’re ancient and thin and smoked
    too many cigarettes in another life.
    This valley is private and irrational. Its
    language does not have a safety-net.
    Language must be translated. This valley is distant
    and shifting. Its company is toxic as
    if you didn’t surmise that already.
    No one cares about you the way that
    I care about you. No one is going to
love you the way that I love you. I was
talking about this valley before you
    interrupted me. This valley that is
    part-decay, part-life, and faintness, and
    electric depth, and cutting burning

flight, and spine-envy and of the toothless shepherd’s season.

    Books come from ghosts. Ghosts, ghost,
    ghosts, ghost. How I love all of them.
    How I want to dance with all of them.

    How I want to kiss their cold lips. Dance
 away
    from the winter in their arms. How I want to

visit stations. Feast upon and treasure and
    trace the winter in their veins. These
    invited-uninvited guests. They’re headless

in the lamplight’s moth flame. They’re
    my tribe. These friendly boys who once
    could have been anything. Now they’re

    all washed away but not their sins. I tell
    myself with feeling that ghosts come from books.
Ghosts come from books. Ghosts come

    from heroic writing. Winter studies of
    the sleeping tongues of beautiful women.
    This is the road taken if you forget me.
Kissing the velvet of you shoulder blades
(for )

    If, if, I cease to exist, or co-exist in your
world, suffering is progress. Flesh museum.
    Bone museum. Open to interpretation.

    The caves are over there, breathing. It is important
    that you know this. This information.

    I think of you in moonlight. I think of you
    when vodka spills from our glasses
    onto the shoreline of the carpeted floor.

    Onto my pantyhose. Onto the fabric of
    my skin. My body cannot keep all of this down
under the ancient pink. Hurt has stunned

    me. Unhealed me. Wounded me. I know
    your anger. Your kind of superiority. Your self-hatred.
    It is only a reflection from youth. A twisted

    crack in the system that is called illusion.
    It is only ritual that will mark you until the
    end of time. There’s a lot to disguise.

    A violin does not only make beautiful
    music. Photographs make me long for something
    we once had. I was no bride. Had no

    groom like my mother once did. I wish
I could be beautiful like the tribe of her.
    Instead the ocean calls to me. Embraces

all of me. My lithe limbs are green, then
    purple. Yes, the ocean calls to me like a
lover. This morning image secret. I’m

    homeward. Tracking driftwood into
the house.
    On the outside, you will find me there. And,

as the waves come in explosions, so
    does the healing. So, does Jean Rhys’s
    Dominica. So, does Brazil. So, does China.

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Abigail George has two books in the Ovi Bookshelves,
"All about my mother" & "Brother Wolf and Sister Wren"
Download them, NOW for FREE HERE!