Abigail George

I thought it was only me feeling empathy

(for Mishka and Stuart Hoosen-Lewis)

The sea’s green eyes watch me with care.
I have to get my soul out of here, the river is here
now swallowing me whole, meta lost in translation.
Then there are the difficulties of being a young
mother, eating liver. I go under the water of the
river, I drown in despair, hardship, tumult, the
romantic earth thinking of what truth sounds like. It is lit, cause
or something beautiful, something divine. Leaf
falls and the tall man catches it. The lonely woman
kisses his cheek, but he refuses to be drawn into
her shadow, her inner music, she must look for a
new home, men in suits despise her for her lack of
sexual expertise, women in clothes don’t want to
be her friend. The lonely woman looks bad in a
dress, in a skirt she looks as if she’s trying too hard,
as if she’s making waves, but no one looks at her.
Not the tall man, not the thin man, not the dark
man, and not the sad man. Like a machine, she is
half-formed by the virgin sea, by sex, by dirt, by grace.
The lonely woman is in search of tenderness,
love, a first love, some bright energy that can
heal her pain and suffering, the sorrow in her eyes,
and she thinks of leaves falling, and the tall man
catching those leaves in his hat, with a smile on
his face, a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. The
men don’t care anymore. The men don’t love her
anymore. And now, she must become death, and life,
change perspective, become cultured and love
the sea creatures that surround her on her educated
island. They have no more conversation for her, the
men, the men, the men dazzle her, but there’s no
room for her in their mansions to grow, to consider,
to laugh, and smile, and play, and all she knows
is running away, and all she knows is to be laughter,
and fragile, and chef. Her voice never sounds like
that with me, declares one man, the fattened ghost
with his multiculturalism quotes, his isms, his museum,
his ephemera. And the clock in the wall is an
animal, and the windows are Rwandan, her poetry
is an elixir, but all the men, all the men do not
care for her, or love her anymore. They have shut
the door on her minority. She is an accident waiting
to happen, waiting to be kissed. There was
something pure about the day, but when bad mothers
happen, bad mothers happen, and daughters who
have bad mothers do not become lovers, do not
call Romeo, and prose is food for thought, food
for the soul, and the title of her novel is in gold lettering
but she doesn’t care, because the men are like air.