Young innocent (majority). A head filled with grace And mercy. As tender as The night. This is my flesh. He is my flesh. This is my Blood. He is my blood. A molten doorway into a Majority of slippery fat Ghost knots. Ripples of Aloes in a mecca. A life of
Skin swimming against skin.
My scars are as cold to me As snow found in a field. Their wounded bodies Have made me an interloper In society. I have a pale fire Inside of me. Sand in the Palms of my hands. Fame Is like a starving volcano inside
My ruby heart. Fame is like
A water diary. Fame is like Carrion inside the grapefruit Of my heart. Even my scars Have songs. This I will Teach everyone who wants To be taught about such things. All night I walk through Valleys. Up mountains. The Iron and the religion of The sun spills over into the
Crux, the inner drive, and
Motivation of the horizon. A girl sees Everything in her future life When a boy holds her hand For the first time and when he kisses her Spring blossoms
In her soul again.
First invention. Let me navigate my way through the starvation of the onset of winter’s frost at the new windows. Berries. The spell cast by boy. I fear walking in the footsteps of the consistently beautiful poem. The natives cram the judgement and self-pity of family matters into their brains. Second gift. The infinite loop of the autumn leaf leans into the sunlight. Now I have to navigate through faint
whispers of light eternal. Third gift.
Then there is love everlasting. The love that is eternal. Sleepwalk if you must through the slipping folds of his map songs. In my dreams while I lick words into shape. Laments, odes, sonnets, their alliterative wings exquisite are beating inside of my heart. His stars that do come out at night worship at the epic people of the river. I am writing my first love poem. It empties itself
out of me on fire. The day leans into the bride
of the sun. Look, look! Look at me. I am writing my first love poem. He risks nothing because he has nothing to lose. Nothing to venture. I risk everything. I have everything to lose. Grace. Hope. His handsome father’s teeth are stained by coffee and cigarettes. The bones in me speak to me in snatches. My flesh seems to vibrate beneath the sun. These vibrations come in waves that spark and splutter, whine and nag. They’re ill. Sick with
glitter bombs, with ideas, and rage, and flux.
They sing and dance. Dragonflies are Lilliputian drunkards on summer life. Their language very much a self-portrait of a forbidden mystery like love. Look, look! Look at me! I am writing my first love poem. A happy poem. See nothing is impossible and the world is new again. Even in the gloomy spaces of winter there is life in its beginning stages. I keep finding poems in a poem.
As I find them I gather them to me.
Abigail George’s writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, most recently at SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY and in MY AFRICA MY CITY: AN AFRIDIASPORA ANTHOLOGY (AFRIDIASPORA, NOVEMBER 2016). She has two books available as free e-downloads from Ovi Magazine: Finland’s English Online Magazine’s Bookstore (http://www.ovimagazine.com/cat/56). She writes from Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa.