I will call the years that come after this
by the names of the years that came before:
little violet sadnesses freaky easterly wind
its tender caresses
when «the family» made some kind of sense,
or at least pretended to (a secret in which, like, well, you know;
marbles rolling down an uncarpeted stairwell).
In the Premier Inn it is dawn again.
(thud thud thud)
I told you I needed you to be a mother
and to care for me and in 1976 you replied by saying,
“I can’t be that person all of the time.”
In 1962 we dutifully scanned each QR code, we woke
calmly in the middle of the night, we called every relative
to tell them the terrible news.
In actual fact this has never been the case:
I remember this now to unfasten meaning.
Back then no-one could tell us
we were part of something bigger
than the family.
(Shhhhh.
REMEMBER : night is work too—)
Somewhere below ground something is burrowing,
arriving to the surface only after a rain,
protected from the desires of another sunset, another sunrise
(no way to know whether it is morning or night
on the surface of the earth)
no need to be in / want to be with / long for “the light”.
Somewhere above ground velvet scraps
are being collected in a dark wooden box,
somewhere something is slotted into the mind
for safekeeping—
somewhere «vision» begins to happen.
The animals were trapped alive and taken to the laboratory.
The cirrus sac is long and narrow, unarmed and slightly coiled,
stained in celestine blue
and mounted in balsam.
Spires of green seaweed gather in the glovebox of a small car
in an anonymous Parisian suburb.
Clotted saliva hangs off a single bare fluorescent bulb.
We bite our tongues to keep
from whispering,
fingers quietly pushing—
each sinking back into our own childhood, unable to distinguish muscle from
bone.
The animals were trapped alive
and transported to the laboratory.
The brain sits in the dark inside a jar in formaldehyde,
inside a box,
in a storage cupboard, in the basement of a university
kept lit 24/7 by bare fluorescent bulbs.
Bodily features that positively identify «her»
undressed in an unfurnished apartment, in a room above a shop, at the top
of the stairs, a corridor kept lit 24/7 by bare fluorescent bulbs.
Regardless of whether it was morning or night
on the surface of the earth,
I thought you said you
had somewhere to be?
Because the sunrise does not belong to me
it is by definition beautiful—
arriving to the surface only after a rain,
no need to be in / want to be with / long for “the light”.
Cruelty is unchosen, but
violence can be anything:
soil remorselessly probed 275ft underground,
fingers grasping an unripe fig from a tree; believing
a hushed rumour
whispered through a hurried window
on which we gorged and filled our bellies
left alone in houses always owned by someone else
slivers of dirty light
grazing somebody else’s emotions,
chasing the corridors of this so-called ‘democratic’ state.
This song, these intolerable headaches, these biopsies stained
in celestial blue—they were all for you,
whether or not you noticed the weight of earthworms
pushing upwards through the soil:
not very «official» information,
but did you know their movement is equivalent
to the global rates of tectonic uplift?
Have you tasted the dark surface of solid earth?
«Vision» begins to happen, and then one “night” the body morphs
into a biological hazard, a semi-autonomous organ,
unable to distinguish muscle from bone—
a terrible untrustworthy representation of timekeeping:
« singing giggling shouting asking playing »
Not sprung from history but sunk within it.
I thought you said you
had somewhere to be?
Her brain sits in the dark inside a jar in formaldehyde,
inside a box,
in a storage cupboard, in the basement of a university
kept lit 24/7 by bare fluorescent bulbs.
Bright illuminators of the corridors of this so-called ‘democratic’ state.
One morning I woke up
and gave birth to no-one: or was it my mother,
my grandmother, my great-great-grandmother?
Fingers quietly pushing—
And suddenly, trees open to
a city / that births a language in which every sentence
must mimic the final vowels of each first word.
Onto which we replaced our own weight
with something heavier, darker, more easy to ripen.
“Dark, dusk, dawn again.”
(thud thud thud)
I would eviscerate my own thoughts if it meant I could stop caring,
but let me start
with a metaphor:
When was the last time you—
you—, you—,
you woke up and knew how to begin the day?
What summers do you remember? I’m going
to put a sky in it. The sky gets stuck
and it’s shaped like a moon.
The birds mimic the cave
the brain the light
the legroom the thought
—the one that reaches them first.
The father The family The terrible rain outside.
Night works so hard to make us dream.
One “night” I slept for 31 hours straight—
ribbon-like worms writhing in the gaps
between toes, velvet scraps suddenly accumulating in the glovebox
of a small car in an anonymous Parisian suburb (a thought:
in actual fact
this has never been the case).
«Vision» begins to happen, paper knives are split in two;
the brain still sits
waiting
in the dark.
(thud thud thud)
If I could
I would make theory from my defensiveness.
It would become an art I would practice from dawn to dusk.
It would become a velvet scrap concealed in a dark wooden box.
It would be my animal trapped alive and taken to the laboratory.
It would be my reason for loving and not my protection against it.
I would move up
in the animal kingdom:
(studying worms, rats, molluscs, foxes, chickens, cats)
before falling prey to a huge historical neurosis.
Consciousness has no location in the brain.
It is a function of language.
We would become the work of our nights if we let it.
April 2025
Note: Some lines have been borrowed from the essay Imprisonment and Excessive Femininity: Reading Ulrike Meinhof’s Brain by Amanda Third, the film Cirrus by Holly Márie Parnell, the poem Transcendental Etude by Adrienne Rich, and the book Seule, au fond du gouffre (“Alone, at the bottom of the abyss”) by Véronique Le Guen.