I remember how it had once tasted;

The sweet air

The stale fumes

The incomprehensible fly to the flame,

Wondering how he, too, fell for the light.

 

Ever since the smell of lifting fog met the eardrum

We knew it was too loud to leave,

And this was the moment the smoke hit the fan;

The grass, too pale to even be called that, had once been our playground,

Musty fingertips with dirt beneath the nails, our best friends.

Radio junkies turned drug gods

Paint turned clot

Family turned cigarette butt,

The pill and the curse

Pulling us back to land just before the fall.

 

Sundaes on Sundays were far and few

But this was the cherry on the cake;

The fire behind this writing of mine,

The wit and the will to this lightbulb moment,

 

So here I am,

The choked faucet still running

The bathroom floor still bubbling

Evanescent watercolour dripping from the walls

And me,

Rolling around on the page with these firecracker ribs and sandpaper throat,

Lying to the pen and the page

Making gold from the gone

As though it deserves to be this way.

 

I am here to convince myself

That although I come from a dark place,

I wear the sun better than Van Gogh flaunts his yellow painted lungs

And this is when I realise;

I am the poem and the poet,

The artist and the work of art

Simultaneously.

 

by Lucy Childs