An Experience

My pain was once ocean. It was
grey in hue. It kept
coming and going.
It hit rocks hard
repeatedly.

Unlike an average ocean, it whirled
at times, as if it danced
around a single fish. After a while

it became dense. It roared
and murmured simultaneously.
It rocked, it sighed. It jerked,
it moaned. Clashing
with cliffs

it multiplied itself
in million droplets.

It dissolved itself in its own matter.
Eventually, it fell
asleep.

I didn't have
a blanket, I covered it
with my swimming towel.

In its dream the ocean talked
to itself.

I couldn't speak the language.
I caught one phrase and put it
in my mouth. It tasted

salty.

I uttered it
many times

before it hit
home.

observations

Polar bears walk
where she used to. She slowly forgets

the old tracks.

She thaws. Around her neck she's wearing
a green scarf, a green hat on her head
in the midst of winter. Her thoughts have
changed in accordance with her inner
season - the green's not pale green
of the feeble grass blades, it's the green
of the rainforest. (She's never been

to the Amazon river, never planned
to move houses that far, that exotic.)

On facebook she notices only
butterflies, she also counts

fish scales in her free time
on fish swimming in the Pacific Ocean.

Her body's light. Her eyes the colour
of the sky at dusk. Something's ended,
it's that simple - we become
a new person one trait at a time until we are
fully shaped again. In a cafe

she says she doesn't mind kids, and smiles

to a three-year-old
at a nearby table. She tastes
the buckwheat cake, sips cranberry
infusion, drops one of her golden
earrings. Laughing, she ducks under the table.
In the candlelight
she shines.

I didn't know 't is that warm
she says outside the cafe. There is joy
in the statement. Her body's light.

In the car

she frees herself from the hold
of the seatbelt to kiss her boyfriend
at the traffic lights. She gets home and kisses

the cat good afternoon. The cat's still
young. She still has time
to savour hours, to let life
blossom. There were announcements
of new era coming: at Golden Terraces,
waiting for the train, she came across
symbolic. She's wearing green.

She thaws.