Skin
Enamel memories are chipping again. I can feel my moments, the ones I loved and hated, dissolving.
Grandma’s cupboard forever. Some things last, linger, slight, but always. She used to keep white pepper in used containers which once has other functions. Ouma. Your grace, even when dignity left you like a thief in the night. Everything smelt like piss, these fucking nappies. Your eyes are already stretched landscape, wise lady. Recite a poem , eyes glow, mash for lunch again…they forget about me.
There was a house on a hill, it smelt like rubber. It had porcelain saucers behind glass, displayed. Outside I used to run in between layers of clammy washing, drying perfume in a breeze. I built a house in the yard, for me, with roof-tiles an hope it would not fall. This house on the hill had a backdrop of brewing clouds, feverishly watching. But everybody thought it was just the weather.
And rain on a window as well, chipping, falling broken glass a scattered dream maybe. Grandma’s house in the rain, us shunning at first, the zinc-roof aggressive tonight. Scrabble, poems about dark horses, running through the woods, cigarette, gulp of wine sweet, bed. Now everything is luke. My grandma’s teeth are in a cold, winter glass of nightwater. I have the radio on my chest, on the lowest possible volume. I am listening to a voice in the night.
I did not care about where they buried her Ouma. Just a vessel, like those old metal jar and bucket, decorated, to wash, displayed on a dressing table with a mirror. Waiting, to purify, to bring warmth on a night when the windows battle with a wind that seems so angry. I started my love-hate relationship with doors when i was still growing, developing into another half of a gender. Close it, nobody is seeing me turn into a woman. Now open it and confront temperature, tearing at my skin.
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