Samantha Walton
What’s Mine
For too long we’ve been experimenting with silence
until the silence became an art, and then the silence became a practice
We practiced at being ourselves until we got the shape and form
of it just right, the gentle edges, the downward lilt of every line
ingrown into the gut, where we wound the secret up just right
tight, so that the thread was spooled before it hit the mouth
a dogged little loop of control we could be proud of, like tearing off a nail
So now, making an accusation is like making a confession is like accusing ourselves
this has become my dark rot after so long nested and stony and ruminant
the blood pumping into it, so big it’s got its own ghosts
its own mad mothers thumbing at the walls
When I peak at the thing it’s like waking up in the middle of an operation
and then I see the carpet, the same dirt, the window, the same dirt
the same dirt on everything. I try not to put my emotions into opposition’s
stupid box. I replace the dirty phrases on the hook and set out my lines
clean and right, all the blood shrinking from the core of me so that I grow faint
In time I become pleasingly hollow
You wanted me to speak, but where to start? Where do any of us start? When did it even start? When I speak about these things I feel so alive, I can’t sleep, I’m burning with energy. Then the lapse, the sea pulled from under me. The tiredness and the feeling that the skin’s been rubbed off, right back to the fat, and the thing is pumping its dank blood for everyone to see, dripping down the skirt
And the only thing that ever helps, has ever helped
are the things we say to one another
when we’re being our most careful. And under the care
anger, and under the anger
something else, perhaps
the unbinding of the flesh
how pain is held in the cells
and may be released, letting life flood back
don’t want to console you
but let me console you
don’t want to quieten you
want to make noise with you
can burn up with you, if you want
just let me know
we can do anything