Poem in which we are everything
I want to start an insurrection with you. Doesn’t matter which.
We’d lead our minions into a capital and coup someone.
I want to walk across the world with you. Secularly step on water
and trace a giant shape in our wake, something
you could only see from space.
I want to build a ladder to the moon with you. Or at least,
to the top of a tree where we would become the view.
Passers-by will point up to us and say
look!
like they do for aeroplanes.
I want us to be ice cubes, held in a palm
long enough for us to become whole again.
I want us to be migratory birds. When the season shifts
we’ll begin our long, laborious journey
from couch to bed.
I want us to be a pair of googly eyes. Move when you do.
Dance together.
We’d appear overnight, stuck
to lamp posts, street signs and fire hydrants.
Watch the day unravel
like a croissant.
I want you to do to me what moss does to fallen trees
and the forest floor, what ferns do to water wells.
I want to do to you what a breeze does
to sweat.
I want you to be a frog, so I can be your lilypad,
or your princess,
or the croak that escapes
your throat.
Together we can prophesy rain.
I want to be spare change, so you can be a well-worn wallet.
We can lay there for generations, be unremarkable.
Do nothing
but gather dust.
Akshay Sreeja is a poet from Kerala, India. He holds an MA in Poetry from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast. His work appears in Gutter, Scottish BPOC Writers Network, The Honest Ulsterman, The Blackbird Anthology, Press Pause Press, and other vague, nondescript places. He is also a spoken word artist, and was one of the finalists of the Loud Poets Scottish Grand Slam competition.