names i called you when we were children

before my brother moved out

of his old room

we would communicate by

knocking on the wall

now i listen to the celestial humming

of the radio choir, and feel

inexplicably understood by them

their slightly off-putting stream of voices

or rather: the pitter-patter of keys

falling forward into place

bending over backwards

to create rhythm, just the sensation of

being alive, rows and rows of the same jolty, jolly, playful rage

recurring throughout the ages

there is nothing we can do to stop them now --

the soul-bursting, migratory

flocks of birds -- from nesting between you and me

i am helpless to listening

the wonderful plover-bird

who comes in warm and magical swarms

to live and breathe

and sleep beneath our sky: the very same sky

you and i were born under

in the country we used to say - the river-lands

more accurately -

that we could see the stars more clearly

for what they were, not as we wanted them to be

but i never asked: what did you want?

when you closed your eyes, which were dreamt up

so keenly by mother and father

did you want to visit those places too?

the idle in-between of great dark sea

and strange, elated child-like wonder ahead?

as though they were really planets we could visit

and not the red-hot abrasions of our beating flesh

materialised?

did you imagine the same far-off galaxy

aloft with the breeze

of eye-catching soreness, a vapid compulsion

as i did? did you understand

what i was trying to tell you?

or were you surprised by the names

i called you when we were children?

when i blow-dried my little host sister's hair

across that vast, unremarkable world

next-door to your own:

did you climb into your bed down the hall

and think of me? of what in the world i was doing

out in the world without you?