Work Text:
WE LIVED IN A STATE
i.
We lived in a state of bliss,
suspended in disbelief
like children in their fantastical fairy-stories.
I was a child, blind with hope. So were you.
You told me each spring was a sure sign
that God was somewhere out there, working his magic,
and sure enough, the poppies were prancing around
like pickled cherries glistening with saccharine
as the sun laved them and us
with a tender, shimmery warmth,
beneath spotless skies dappled with finches and blackbirds.
I told you, on impulse, that I wish I’d been born a bird.
You said you understood;
that you wanted to fly towards the sun, too.
So hope bloomed into hunger and ripened into ambition,
and we were children,
blind with hope.
(Land of the free, or so they avowed.)
We became prisoners of our own ambition.
ii.
We lived in a state of war,
fooled into believing
that defending one’s home was an act of war.
Maps of fate charted for us, and the nifty compass we tucked
neatly in our hearts, hoping it might be a torch in the dark
were gone with the wind like dust.
This is how the scene unfolds, searing itself
into tautological, impressionable minds:
Ladies-in-waiting, man-at-arms in the trenches
toddlers wailing for a flash of fatherly warmth
and then: carrion and clarion, all strewn
like ash and bone across the flaking dunes.
Guilt dug into our ribs like God’s hand did
when he made Eve: mother of all the fathers,
of all the beautiful lovers and the foolish sinners.
(Home of the brave, or so they announced.)
We clung onto a melted mirage of a promise.
iii.
We lived in a state of affairs,
scrabbling and scrambling
for new truths, a new hope.
We had won a war, but they had lost lives,
and we had lost our souls; an overall loss.
Too late, then, that only two wars later
— one around us, one within,
were we no longer children, blind with hope,
or prisoners rife with ambition.
Now we were soldiers in pursuit
of genuine triumph; a legitimate victory,
issuing discreet clarion calls in dead-end alleys,
hoping these might one day pave the road
to a brave new world.
Home of the brave, we avowed.
We fought against those who turned us against each other.
iv.
We lived in a state. Of mess, of peace, of love,
of anything that we could get our hands on.
We held hands in the dark and counted scars.
Your hand was ridged, antiseptic;
like a groomed knight's
or an inexplicably clean child's
— the same hand I knew and loved.
In spring we picked poppies under the sun again,
pocketing each smile, each smitten grin
like a game of child’s play; our skin rough and scorched
like desert sand.
We were happy. We lived to be fifty. We lived in a state.
Land of the free, we announced.
We clung onto each other; turned ourselves in as prisoners.
v.
We lived in a state
— never mind if we never died
in a state of grace.