Ceiling

Photo art by Reka Jellema. Copyright April 2015.

ceiling -- I have known
your open eye
the slope of white descend
and blind, the slap
of your gloss surface,
felt it press on my illness
levitate above my fixed
sight, the top of a box

the ways we bled
a glass of lucid
another glass
and then the end

will this be one of those nights
operatic in my head
the lamp-lit sun speeding round
the catatonic
fixed
just little trickles
between the stitches
the round burns

and this -- understudy
to the abyss
your watery wink
O death
the depth,
the anchor sinks
beneath the weight of wave
heaviness oceanic,
I get lost
when I go under

the wreck
the wrack of self
a magnitude that sharks
plow through
uneaten 
to the surface, nibbling the edges
of the unconscious

all along I hid

within an upper floor
within a room
a single bed
cheese squares in the fridge
a cup of pills
a man in scrubs 
a host of diagnoses dressed
in paper gowns, 

this is where
I live


By Reka Jellema & Jennifer Savage
Copyright April 24, 2015