The New World

I remember when I thought this world would go on forever.

A glimpse of a street was enough to lull me, fill me with the rest.

No sense of impending doom permeated the cupboard contents.

Nor did the shape of the buildings hold a sinister portent.

It was a small thing to envision my life in clear coloured frame.

This is the timeline of events over a lifetime, you and me and you.

Now I am small and clouded. Murky water in a squat jar.

I am guided by a single clear star that’s actually a planet.

It hangs against my neck, just underneath my earlobe and

rests there like a hand. Its directions are directional and its

language is plain. I take it in circles. Its tap root goes deep.

Sometimes when you kiss me your hand slides against my

neck, between planet and skin. Small tears form on the surface

of the sphere due to the additional emotional load. Your hand

against my jaw holds me up. I will take you with me when I go

into the new world as my body disintegrates around me.  

Empty/Full/Together

If we are fucking I am laid bare to bones. The moment you kiss me my skin falls off like a leaf. The difference between the idea of this and the reality is I am cold metal when you’re touching me now. I am fossil, ice and stone. I am supposed to look like a human woman and inside I am just the slow dripping noise of a stalactite and stalagmite trying to meet in the middle. I am paper I shred myself with my teeth.

If we are fucking you look at me like I’m a gift of fawns. A box of two or three, revealed slowly as a jumble of tiny legs. My surface is laid out by your hands like sheets on a bed. Your palms are flat and travel in gentle arcs. You are warm like ceramic leeching heat from its contents. And then you spike like a storm in summer when the skies are all crack and doom. You are seeing me as I cannot see myself.

If we are fucking we look at each other through nothing. No distance. We are both in this place together. I’m pretending. You’re trying not to. The hills roll away forever on the forgotten highway and I’ll never get out but I never want to leave. I’ll crack open like an egg revealing smaller softer selves around each bend in the road over each clatter of railway crossings. We’re making a very small room on earth for us.

Emma Barnes

Emma Barnes lives in the Aro Valley going through existential crises at about the same rate as firewood.