Emily Winters                                                                                                                     

“Resurface”

(Is everything in my head)

We were something and this house

Had breath,

Shuddering around us as it laid us

To rest

Am I going down

The long path to a forgotten memory

A buried thought that is hiding somewhere in

A crevice, the folds of my brain

Sheltering the repressed the shudders

The breaths

Living thing

Roadkill walking away

Hitch-hiking one step at a time

In time with my hitching chest as I flail and

Fight with the air for my portioned share

Trying to comprehend this madness

That is life

Are we all mad here

A communal trip where we all

Suck the marrow out of life

And taste nothing but the acid at the end

Of the line the liner of the bucket

As the plastic gets all torn and my eyes

Go blind with the resurgence –

Waves threatening to whisk me away

To the bad time

Deep inside

Hidden

Shoved behind the washer

Beneath the rug, my memories are

Collecting dust

But I like them there – can’t you see

That I do not want to see

What you have made me

Into this being of cruelty

The crude caricature, a child’s drawing of me

The repressed

Sheltering the breaths, the depressed

The mothers clutching their children

To their heaving breasts, covering their eyes

So that hopefully they have no time to see

The bad thing and hopefully maybe their brains

Won’t absorb the memories

And maybe the young won’t be burned

But did I imagine it all

That this house had breath that sailed like daggers

With each settle of its hindquarters and each creak

As the basement dug deeper into Hell

Do we all become mad when the memories

Rise to the surface