It was spring when he began to feel a dangerous lightness in his bones.
He floated to work, hovering above the ground as he potted up grass seeds shaped like comets. The dirt under his fingernails took on the quality and colour of galaxy black. His thoughts were spaces as far apart as stars.
When he floated home, he didn’t have a shadow, he didn’t have a belly, he was too far out. Somehow, he found the doorway to his own house, down in the understory. When he crossed in to sleep he bobbed against the ceiling like a helium balloon, among the dusty cobwebs that had once made links of time and space, in the alien corners.
by Joan Fleming from The Same as Yes (page 39)
Published by Victoria University Press
Used with the permission of Victoria University Press
This poem is part of the Tuesday Poem Scheme.
