Driftwood
(for my paternal grandparents, Ouma, and Oupa)
I’m alone. I’m alone again, a solitary figure thinking
ever after of you, for you are the love of Ophelia’s life,
of you, and the ownership of daughters in a maze, the
race question, the class system when in Rome. You
either love me, or you don’t. You either care for me
or you don’t. Once my flesh was a prize, now I’m older,
wiser, but what to do with this knowledge, there’s no
exit out of this soldiering on, sleeping alone, waking
alone, and I’m surrounded by star-people who work
miracles on me. I trust so hard, I let the sun go down
on me, summers are cold, winters are cold, they whisper
of their neuroses to me, and I’m asking for forgiveness,
and I’m asking to be loved, and I’m asking you to fall
in love with me if you dare, she’s transformed into
matter, particles, atoms, molecules, air, Norma Jean
and Marilyn, and I can’t accept anything that is less than
love, or reading the wonderland-feeling of your body, and
I think of your gravity, meeting my gravity, your air
meeting my outspoken lips, my hair, my shoulders, and
I want to bring you down, give you all the love that I
can give, instead I’m sleeping alone, and you’re with her,
you’re with the love of your life, and I only fell asleep
in the early hours of the morning, the night was hell to
tell you the truth, because you weren’t here if you want
to know. I’ve been listening to Coldplay the entire
morning, trying not to think of you kissing the love of
your life, while I’m here on my own. You think you
know me, you think you’ve fallen in love, but I’m ghost.
I’m fattened ghost, self-conscious ghost, it feels like it
did when I was little. I miss you waking up in the morning.
I’m not intimidated by your lady friends anymore, just
scared-competent. You can love whomever you want,
show me mercy, show me grace, make me cry because
you’re so good at doing that to me anyway, and this funny
woman loves you so much, would do anything for you.
And then I woke up as if from a grassroots-dream, glee,
fragile, how to live without you, this fire catching fire,
and I think of the journey and direction of the mis-
understood flame, and everything is psychological guess-
work, my jealousy is magnificent, my love is abundant
and needs permission from you to exist, all I have is this
organic depression, this pilgrimage. Delete all of that.
Kismet
(for my paternal grandparents, Ouma, and Oupa)
You and that see-through dark-haired girl, you love
her, don’t you. Let me count all the ways you love her.
I could be dead, or just missing, or just missing out
on you. Your name is a song inside my head, and mob
justice burns bright tonight. There’s so much of you
in the narrative and context of my stories. There will
always be so much of you. And we were never lovers,
nor boyfriend and girlfriend, just a crack in the system,
and you know how much I love you, and you know
about my nervous breakdown, that I never finished
high school, and I know you want to be a family-man,
I know you want to build a home; I know you want
to belong, but life means different things to us, to us.
My home is the world, my home is under Scandinavian
skies, my home is sexy-Swaziland, minor earth and
major sky. Your lips are like velvet, and my face is
made of stone. I think you’re the epitome of cool, want to
kiss you so much, pull you in real close, but you’re in
love with a dark-haired girl now, and I have to respect
you, and remember you, and remind you I loved you too,
I loved you before she did, I loved you first. It’s
lonely out here blogging away in this frozen wilderness,
but writing brings an order to my life, and my neck is
graceful, and you’ll never see me naked, it has been too
long, and so many things have gone unsaid between us.
So, this is goodbye then my loyal friend until I see you
in heaven. And I’m going to cry Argentina, there’s nothing
you can do about that. We could have been lovers. We
could have been lovers. We could have been lovers. And I’m
not maternal, although my throat has a masculine energy.
Pushcart Prize nominee Abigail George is a South African blogger, essayist, poet and short story writer. She briefly studied film at the Newtown Film and Television School followed by a stint at a production company in the heart of Johannesburg. She has received two writing grants from the National Arts Council, one from the Centre for the Book and another from ECPACC. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Aerodrome, Africanwriter.com, Bluepepper, Dying Dahlia Review, Entropy, Fourth and Sycamore, Hackwriters.com, Gnarled Oak, Mortar Magazine, Ovi Magazine, Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine, Praxis Magazine Online, The Missing Slate, and The New York Review. She is the writer of 6 books.