Red Red Towels

There is an earthquake inside of me
every month,
it clots and drops through me
slowly distributing cramps
on the lower side of things.

Long ago I was an egg
now, I make eggs
and break them
with lost appetite

I used to be a girl
with legs that could part wide on any day
jump ropes , kick balls
and have nothing drop out
slowing, gently, making me crazy
counting the days, rolling blood in my palm...

There is an earthquake happening inside of me
and you want me to say hi?
Look, fetch me a towel and wait

Delali

“Remember when we were happy and carefree
and laughed at Eric in class?”

Where did those days go?
or was it us who left?

“We are not laughing enough”

Laughter can hurt
so it doesn't come around if there is already pain

“We started paying rent”

Yes we did and we started measuring our dreams
with our hands
the (wo)man of our dreams had appeared and left and appeared and left and appeared and left and still it wasn't them

we felt our dreams had lied to us
and had the nerve to stay on in our face
telling us that it was our fault
that we didn’t dream new dreams

and when we dreamt new dreams
it was a dream in the old dream
and we cut our hair
grew it
hated it
and loved it the next day

we confuse our dreams
as our dreams play with our freedom

maybe we stopped laughing because we stopped dreaming
maybe we stopped laughing because we stopped looking for Eric