CAT HARRIS
If you had been born, these threads
I would have woven for you:
stories told and retold,
in the hope that you’d hold
on to my form, and reform
yourself into an image of me—
an imaginary—that will, now,
never be. So,
I will have nothing to pass on,
like these picture books
I collected for myself, but which,
I think, were actually for you.
And I see all the characters waiting
on the edges of pages,
their voices muted by the
weight of unopened covers.
All these stories in storage, like
buds in spring that fail to flower.
And I would’ve sung that Kate Bush
song, while you animated the sky,
tracing shapes with your eye,
and you’d say,
‘That cloud...that cloud…
it looks like Ireland!’
and I’d say,
‘Blow it a kiss now…
but quick! ‘Cause it’s changing…’
to when I was twenty-three
and got swept up in dreams,
desperate to lift the veil
between realms.
How I tried to find
my higher self, closer to spirit—
no doubt you would
have rolled your eyes.
And when I felt a little nostalgia,
I became a collector of Care Bear
paraphernalia, and formed
a Care Bear cult,
a castle in the sky,
that accumulated like
a bunch of fair weather,
fuzzy knights.
Just look at these piles
of letters from my childhood:
stacked neatly in boxes,
though not so neatly written;
sitting, like rotten leaves
that won’t be recovered
nor reminisced upon
after I’m dead. Words
immortalised on paper
only work if they’re read.
All these memories without recipient.
I hold them in me.
I hold them for my phantom child.
I weave them into a blanket,
and nestle myself in the clouds.
There’s something in the gathering
that fills negative space.
It’s like
theaccumulationofthings
holds me in place:
a fortress to prevent my falling,
propped up like a puppet,
part of the mise-en-scène,
that could have been—real.
Now I feel my chest oppressed—
what will I do with all this mess?
Would’ve been so much easier to
leave it to you, and nice knowing
it would’ve been treasured,
laid out, held, my memories
measured: a little bric-à-brac legacy.
All of this, the fabric of me.
You would have been made of
the same—my little shadow—
but now, I must shake you free.
Who will gather to witness my life now?
There will be no spectators.
Just an old woman,
laughing at herself,
and throwing her loom to the air—
Cat is an Irish-Australian emerging writer, bookseller and tutor living in Ocean Grove, Victoria, on the traditional lands of the Wadawurrung. Raised in both Perth and Ireland, and finding it difficult to settle in any one place since then, Cat’s writing draws from themes of identity, anomie, mental illness, intergenerational trauma, memory, and the suburban gothic.
