The Unasked Question (with Tania P)

Perhaps like light itself – now particle, now wave – the unasked question lives in between, just out of reach, leading us both out into the world and back into the depth of ourselves. Like Parsifal we ride forth, throats dry, with bugs whirring about our heads. We are deeply touched by all we behold, yet unable to say so.

Maybe like a fish in a bowl in a house of cats, we find the roof drops daily incrementally and the world outside the one we know looms closer under the thirst of what drinks from above. No matter how many times we circle the borders, something we hadn’t seen before appears, peers in, disappears.

Spell (with Tania P)

Perhaps to assemble the letters that make up the name of a thing, in the correct order, is to effect a magic. The land speaks through us as we travel across it – the rustle of grasses, the mystery of a paw print in damp soil, the whisper of trees, water, moths and mud. But be careful: there’s a cipher attached to that string.

Maybe letters, like ladders, give rooftop transport, the means to change out a lightbulb on a darkening porch, attic access to trunks full of envelopes stamped with the o's of foreign postmarks. Best gripped by a pair of hands at the base, bearing without comment the weight of thieves and lovers alike on their way to the unlocked window behind which, each is convinced, rests the holy grail in the shape of a thing to pawn, or a girl.

Aperture (with Tania P)

Perhaps dead in the yard: this swollen thumbs-width olive trunk, scabbed and knobbed at multiple pruned junctures. Waist high, antlered, waiting for the end. Faithless gardener, look again: branch tips host waxen stems, green-rimmed scarlet spears that secret concentric butter hearts girls of earth will later pluck and slip behind their ears.

Maybe every flower that exists first opens in the mind of the dreamer of that flower. In the deepest hour of the night the sleeping buds begin to stir, slowly unfolding their translucent petals, one by one, giving off a faint scent that draws the night moth out of darkness.