Unsettled

At the edge of an idea
inside a summer afternoon,
my vertigo unsettles me.
The walls spin:
a flicker of disharmony
threatening to upend 
the solid ground on which I began
to stand on my own two feet —
as if it is so easy to take down
something that was so hard to build
as if it is so simple to unravel
stitch after fucking stitch.

But it is always something small
that eats into the big.
Like the person who told me that, being brown,
I shouldn’t be writing about 
the heat or mangoes or crowds
because that much is already baked into
every word I write —
the small that always hides something 
big behind it.
Though this time I don’t know why  
my world wobbles
like its axis is scarred
like its pelvis is cracked
like something promised up in the sky
is going to be unleashed upon unsuspecting soil.

But this is not about that —

I don’t want to think about poetry
I don’t want to relearn movement
I don’t want to see concrete shredding itself like cardboard
I don’t want to hear another question about another tomorrow —
the big that always hides behind something small.

I must give in and let myself float:
heart and brain and inner ear in a quiet updrift.
I would surrender if I knew to whom.
I would disappear if I knew how to.
I would cry if sadness had remained sadness.
I would tell if you would only ask.

The walls move like kaleidoscope
patterns, changing without colour,
everything, a house of cards,
the king and queen leaning in to 
make a small steeple.
The big things have other plans.

#Poetry