I painted my toes

Meditating on the old couple I had seen
Sitting on their pot plant balcony
The beautiful morning wrapped around them lightly
He, question mark bent in his white plastic chair
She, facing him in hers.
She had her foot up between his legs
Varicose veins bumpy blue on a well-used limb
But yet – perhaps through age or public intimacy –
The gesture did not seem sexual,
As it would seem if I were to place my foot
Between the legs of my lover,
Only indecently personal
Heartbreakingly kind
As he trimmed her toenails for her
Upon the potplant balcony.

Post script: In an act of mathematical collusion, I seem to have won the Words or Whatever Slam. This was a total surprise to me.

What was not a surprise to me was how amazing it was to see (Doubting) Thomas, Betsy “my name is its own fierce” Turcot, and Dark Wing Dubs performing. Three very different performers, all bringing depth and thought and fire.

Today I have had such a lovely day; I even had a nap after reading on the couch. I’m going to make some of Mim’s cauliflower soup. The evenings of late seem to have been cold enough to warrant it. Then I’m going to see some bikes.

I even felt relaxed enough I could put on one of my PNG dresses. It’s strange to look at yourself sometimes the way that you used to be. I used to be the kind of person who wore a lot of fifties vintage dresses from op shops in PNG. I bought them for friends, mailed them in the slowest mail known to man and hoped that my friends still looked the way they used to look before I lived thousands of kilometres and about three decades away.

Sometimes we want all the parts of us to collide, for the poetry, the cycling, the politics, the personal, the wine, the women, the song – for all of those things to be contained within one person.

Today I feel like those people are close to being all a part of me. I am split, like light through a prism, and everywhere you look is a different part of the rainbow of me.