-shape of me
often, I am asked
how do you write
the reality is
I don’t
writing fashions me
moulds this shape shifting identity
-W.E.
I’m corrugated iron railings that have been painted one too many times, lived through one too many genre’s of fashion, layers of paint all peeling through to show the carelessness of BMX bikes scraping up and down the stairs
I’m tiny wood panel floors, made for sliding with football socks on, made for using a screw driver to pry up, made for ringing a mop daily to wipe up the dust of nothing happening.
I’m the porcelain of the bathtubs, two brothers and one sister, because bathing is quicker, all in, all out, until my limbs won’t fit, even alone. Then I have to learn to stand, use my own hands, turn a squeaky, hammering tap handle, wait for pipes to pipe up their muster and be on my toes ready to jump out of scolding water when it comes through.
I’m rusty clothes lines. Spinning in the wind with white singlets and coloured underwear, orchestra of wailing, catching sun rays double time and creating it’s own hurricane of chip wrappers and discarded girly mags underneath, each item racing each other.
I’m Velcro wrap sneakers, three stripes cool on the side, because we have rep as young as five, them mean school yard battles you’d win by just being a notch above by privy of your dad’s weekly cheque.
I’m grazed knees, dripping blood down shins onto white socks, ready for a pull of the ear when I got home for being careless because napisan wasn’t around thirty years ago.
I’m a cheese sandwich toasted atop an element heater with a steel grill, in front of a box the size of a car that belted out through 3 inch speakers the tune of ‘good old dukes’ as we were enthralled every time as two men slid on the hood of a car.
I’m my mother’s fingers carving fruit by hand, skilled carving, measured servings, when fruit tasted like fruit not a plastic synthetic renditions.
Whatever I look at, I can relay a memory I never took for granted,
that I am still grateful for,
that allowed me to grow into this something that knows how to recall,
to write scores,
and to spill it all,
for people to reflect,
remember things, large and small.
-W.E.
lonerloaner 