poetry by felicity d’souza

Going West

DIDN'T SUFFER THAT BAD is the ideal description for a dead person. A list of euphemisms for dying include: to bite the dust, to kick the bucket, to push up daisies, and, to go west. I guess that means the ocean is eating the sun each night. Sounds good, sounds promising. I want to be devoured by something too big for the earth and touch the bottom of it. I want to fall in love under the boardwalk down by the sea. I want to fall like fruit from a tree and burst against the good earth. The earth is still good in some places, right? I know everybody feels like they're owed something. I know everybody who actually is owed something never gets it.

What I mean is when I feel like the world owes me, I look down at my empty hands and try to imagine them full. I wanted to write past the blood, the bleeding, the dirt on my face, but I was always bleeding. Picture it like this. Me in the middle of the road waiting for a train or a bus or a bike or a poem to hit me and split me in half. When you ask where it hurts the most, I hold out my empty hands. I am still playing pretend, imagining they aren't what they are.

Look—you're hurting and I'm hurting, and I know our hurt is on the kind of frequency that only dogs can hear. We keep the neighborhood up all night, but we can't keep up like this. What I mean is just because I love you doesn't mean you have to love me back. I'm too grown up for that. What I mean is when I die my autopsy will show I fought tooth and nail for my right to love empty handed and hurt loud enough to wake the dogs. What I mean is when something does hit me and split me in half, tell them I went west, tell them I'm under the boardwalk, tell them I didn't suffer that bad.

On Deferring the Grief

I’ve been having the same dream lately. The one where I'm swimming in the river with my mum, except she’s younger and I can see the resemblance. She floats on her back while I do laps until it’s time for us to leave. She lets me use the towel first, opting instead to wring out her flaxen hair as she watches me cover up. 

In my dreams my mum talks casually of grief, as though mentioning breakfast or having to walk the dog. She tells me where she holds it, in the left-hand pocket beneath her ribcage, while I count the droplets that form where her loose curls end to meet the stern of her back. She tells me where it spreads, out towards her palms and leaking from her mouth, while I pick at split ends and burned shoulders. She asks me if I’m listening, we both know I don’t.

In my dreams I want to respond, to tell her how my body has been formed to fit around my grief, encasing it in red flesh. When I open my mouth, I cough up river water and she presses her fingertips against my lips to dab it up. She tells me she would kill him, that she would bear the guilt if it meant I could be saved from the gift.

I want to tell her the grief has become religious, that to kill it would be to strip me of my faith, my legend. I want to tell her my body is the sacrificial lamb and the altar on which it is slain, the temple and its holy man. In my dreams my mum knows this and tells me it’s not right for a mother to outlive her child. I think about the child I buried last July and nod. I would have named her after a flower, she wouldn’t have known shame. 

In my dreams she asks me if I’d like to go for one last swim and I say yes. She tells me I’ll have to wait for the sun to dry me, that the towel is already wet. I tell her I know; I’m listening.