They arrive smiling,
wearing masks of kinship and open
mouths full of sharp edges and
their leaking love is a container
filled with expectations.

Your name becomes a thin slice,
folded, creased, and then torn
at the boundaries where you
refused to fit.

But now
the moment when
their spit meets your eye
and you transform,
not into fury,
not into ghost,
but towards the cleanness of
resolution.

I will not be your ageing ghost,
your convenient shape,
your inherited bruise,
performing to order.

From the wounds
there will be new architectures
and ribs that curve not down but
toward a self-made sky.

They call this rebellion.
I call it
breathing, being,
living in sovereignty.

The space between us widens
like a desert that cannot be trod,
and each move away
is a new sunrise
that they cannot see.

I have to become stranger,
and this unfolding is more beautiful
with each repetition,
without expectation,
painted in the colour purple.

 

7/6/2025