Off-line
If you go by mind, instead of by sea,
Sally, you will not need lotion or a towel.
You can just sit on flat sand and paddle with your hands
In buckets of wash-water. Squeeze out what’s willing
To go. Contemplate the sensations while your mother
Slowly loses hope of your return.
A female runaway always turns her face around to show a whole person hanging
From space with eyes open and darkly crayoned flaps for lips.
She is central. She seems to ask: when she walks.
Were we stuck up or just sickly.
You can’t escape once you have been born. You are now permanent no matter
in what carnation. Permanent means forever. Repeating self after self
white as bones and only a few knowing they will never be free of existence once
they are in it. They know they are sad, obedient, always the same one that they will never
be again. Be buried by rubble after a bombing and they will still be imprisoned by
their nerves. So it is with freedom. A paradox.
There is the sea again and a white iceberg, or island in a mist.
And a hand flailing at her backside where the coins slide. - Fanny Howe
