a poem by tahlia chloe

It is in situations like these

It is in situations like these where I am trying to pull my brain out of my body. The telling conjunction of two souls risen from different waters. The clangour of the wrong two people in the wrong room at the wrong time. My lungs are galloping. Everything you’ve ever wanted you’ve pulled in by its hair; the world just got a little bit closer. How far can one run on just a single breath? How far can one run with no breath at all? I sling the memories of us under my arm – the lyricism of my tongue, lapping against your tongue, like waves along the coast. The ocean was never enough for you. The earth was never enough for you. Hanging me from my neck was never enough for you. The day we stopped moving with the shoreline was the day you stopped calling me home. The last time I tried to prevent white noise from becoming an elegy you came back with clenched fists. I no longer attempt to turn vicissitudes into something good.  A noticeable declension. So I froze into a caryatid; in a state of rigor mortis I offered up the bone. You came and placed your heart on mine. Please, I beg, either peel me from my chrysalis and skip me like a stone, or let me follow a new trajectory: trying to fit into the margins.  Ignore the diminished chords and sombre notes. Blood can only rush for so long. Give me back my lilt and all its synonyms. I will cast the net and hope for the best, maybe beneath the oyster beds I can sink my feet into clay.

19y.o. Tahlia identifies as “a very bad writer, and an even worse lover”. She is from Sydney, Australia.