directed by Ishu Patel
words by Marilyn Bowering

Darkness becomes me.

some times i say all the wrong things and give all the wrong reasons for saying wrong things, and the world doesn't understand me, or maybe it does but right now i like to think that it doesn't, because that's easier than acknowledging my own lesser points--the abnormalities that show me for who i am, not who i've pretended to be all these years--and then i wake up some days and forget that i've been faking, because it's suddenly become me and now it's impossible to separate fact from fiction and that's just fucking queer.

just today i am realising that it's the imperfection in a person, a song, a line, an image that completes it...i've been striving all these months to be perfect and i've only just discovered that ugliness makes it so...photos mottled by edges of windows, reflections distorted by unplanned movements are the depth of crisp lines and clear cut messages without the bullshit of being calculated.

and then I found

From days in the roller derby on Broad Street spread out on the tarmac like sunscreen on your back at the beach we used to go to. Flowers smell like stale toast and dandelions are still all I ever think of anymore--it's like you erased the good and the bad in the instant you told me, 'it's not for us' but it was us anyway. The days I spend counting flower petals hoping to land on 'he loves me' but always ending on 'not'. You remind me of the smell of salt on the wind as it races back from the sea, wild and bursting with stories we can't read; but I breathe you anyway.

resurfacing

..dumbstruck on the balcony smoking opium half pipes and thinking about last summer I spent digging for clams in the garden--bare now with twig gravestones marking the leaves as they fade to the colour of dust, and then dust to settle amongst the pebbles that now call this place home...

Italian

I want to be like the old Italian men who meander the path along the canal, shirtless on their bikes, slowly and with purpose. Their tans are etched into their bodies; some have white lines where their shorts meet the skin, the contrast looks natural. Their skin stretches smoothly over their wiry frames, white hair cut clean and out of the way, there is only a tiny roll of flesh on the stomach where it bends forward toward the handlebars... their contentment is contagious, but their disdain for average is obvious. They own this place.

intrinsic need.

the feeling that life is without want for living when devoid of it.
my eyes flutter when the breeze is still, it's you i'm thinking of.

a place, a time or a memory--necessity for that which no longer exists.
but did it ever?

today it's a beach, a mountain covered in greenery; movement, a smiling face and waves that never begin, that forget to end.
air flows deep inside of me lighting fires in the darkest caverns of my chest; give way no light, here.

to travel is to behold, and there are kinds of travel that don't require open eyes.
the heaviness of my dream weighs like metal fingertips around my throat, and you disappear down the street.

i recognise this place from home.