Submissions by Kaatho

I heard a play at three in the morning
A woman's voice, wavering, unsure
as it sidestepped leaf and cobweb
to my bedroom window
moving nothing

She feels the space - room to move
There's time yet, and silence to push through
The voice experiments a little
leaving murmuring behind
toying with soft cajoling
like a pup who whimpers and dances
dust on her chain
choking herself - the pain of entrapment
made cruelly, unnecessarily sharp
in the desire for release
the desire for freedom

Leaves jostle leaves
cobwebs shiver...

Sitting crosslegged on the bed, gaze searing the wall, my sister's face jolts into view, looking for clues.

Your ashes had arrived in the post.  Blue plastic bag in a cardboard box, like lunch.

We go to the place.  A place torn with clumsy, insensitive hands, meant for reflection, overlooking the bush-clad land you'd held so dear.  Became creation, tentative saplings and delicate mosses, heady scent of Manuka.

The seat in the bush had become a place of death, your death.  The Manuka smelling thick of old blood.

Had you known?  Had you known that this...

Dad, my Dad
You are a missing eye, horrific, sad
Obvious in your absence
More expressive, more compelling than the most fixed of stares

That is typical of you
Close the lid on all that is, and think you can effect your own disappearance
But you attained a salience your survival would have excluded
You knew that, eh ostrich?
Ghosts are more visible than people

You took your own eye for an eye ... for revenge, or because you could not bear to look
To destroy that which is not ready, to pluck yourself out in a see-red rage, is a blasphemy...