Oliver Doe
It was as if nothing was really there
The sky is almost the colour of an unripe avocado around where the clouds are. Oh, Universe, the trees are so small around here and the southbound tracks banked so high, iron tendrils stretching their roots across wet earth the last time I was here half of the trees were underwater anyway, they’ve had enough. I have not loved enough and here I am with less than a day for you. I am fleeting as my mood, as the air that had seemed like Spring. Quiet vibrations of my soul, be still, I would like to hold my breath as long as I can, until I see you, so that I might take this all in, a weak grey sun combing its way through concrete and glass; I hope you think of me as it sets so much more beautifully for you tonight.
“What a beautiful dream...� the places where our skin and our lips meet as a border with no real lines not quite my body but not quite your body, but the places in between, what a beautiful dream.
My eyes might wander but my words won’t mind, their songs forgotten and lost by all bar those few, who have lost themselves and forgotten what goodness might actually be. My words might wander but my eyes won’t mind, fixed on their place on my love, so that soon I might forget what loveliness really is.
February is terribly warm. Truth! Truth!.. But then I suppose that wouldn’t be reality. The sheets are actually warm enough for me to think of your cold fingers tracing the contours of my spine; must you? I would have preferred to sleep with you (as they say) but Patti Smith is wheeling around my mind “and I’m gonna ah-ah make her mine” and I don’t want to have you like that. Let’s romance (I’m sorry I never bought you flowers), I’ll make us two cups of tea. I just made myself two cups of tea…
I remember that time last year, with the bottle shaped like Champagne, that had me excited, I made us take a photograph and all my love for you in my eyes had you excited, instead we drank warm gin and bourbon (I’m sure I can’t stand bourbon) and had a quiet night’s sleep. Can you recall the lights from Kew? At New Year’s gone; that one shaped like a peacock had you excited, you made me take a photograph and all the electricity in the trees had me excited to drink wine with you, with the television muted (I’m still not sure whether I like the Talking Heads) and rest my head on your shoulder.
Started crying today looking at a picture of a painting I didn’t like in a book that I did. It was as if nothing was really there. It was as if you weren’t really here – I can’t remember the fall of your fringe, but I can remember the smell of Osmanthus flowers… Perhaps I do like that painting, then, or more likely, perhaps, I need you more than I want to admit.
Lament my leaving so that I might translate your absence to an object, or mine to these words, both held precious, unwanted and unremarkable, like that scar just below my seventh rib; you say you don’t notice. I’ve painted that scar seven times this year, but I still cannot see it.
My breath is misting up the window pane today for want of your lips.
Words whisper around corners past glass like our watered-down wine through blood’s vessel. Your ambition would burn if I could ever hold a candle to it. Still, I don’t think I have ever seen you, completely, naked.
My bedside lamp glows red, reflecting an old gift bag I never received the whole thing is quite seedy; I am thinking of you, missing you between my sheets, or arms, or legs, but instead of your back, my red lamp illuminates a book of sculptures that I don’t particularly like. Their forms will never be able to replicate the sight of you, over me, so perfectly lit.
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Produced for the Newcastle University BA Fine Art Degree Show 2016 All content Š Oliver Doe, 2016 All rights reserved