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Conscience Fiction Posts

Liquid oxygen

Published by Ilva Pieterse on 14 April, 2009

Here I am again
Standing at the foot of that hill of my dreams
I feel it again
My eyes filled with tear gas that doesn’t let me cry
And I’m waving goodbye
To liquid oxygen.

There I go again
Thinking with my head clamp on
Waiting with my chastity belt on
Choking on liquid oxygen

At the bottom of that hill with no ascend
I taught myself to drown.

– 02/11/1998

Adam’s rib

Published by Ilva Pieterse on 8 March, 2009

I found her sitting motionless. Like a rock in the wind.

I didn’t look forward to seeing her again. But I went to her because I knew she was suffering. I also knew only I could alleviate it, albeit temporarily. Getting to her was like walking though a maze. But I could always smell their skin for kilometers.

Continue readingAdam’s rib

She is me

Published by Ilva Pieterse on 8 March, 2009

She is free
She lives her life as a book with intricate pages
I can smell them on her. I smell books on my mother. She reeks of their shrieking, pongs of their pulsing.

I cry her a book
With my tears, I mold a wet life for us
My mother makes me cry because she is in me
When I whisper, her eyes close
When she whispers, I become still.

Mother, when I was small, you had broad arms and strong wrists for me
You still carry me in a variety of ways.

Now, I want to carry you – your body, your heart, your soul
I will make myself so strong that I can carry it all – on my back, with my arms, inside my mouth

The day you placed me outside of you, I never wanted to let go.
I pulled, you pushed.
You pulled and I pushed.

The friction caused a dictionary.
And we rewrote our souls. Our soul twins.

I’ll never let you go, wherever you are…

Where is the child?

Published by Ilva Pieterse on 29 December, 2008

There is a little girl with a marble torch that shines nothing but the colour she is made of. And the strings, like that of a marionette that keep her alive – and moving – are attached to the hand of one she does not recognise. Little puppet, little puppet, lick my skin.

Faulty fingers molest her moving. And she becomes bright – like something unrecognisable to God. And she twists her hips in longing, in revolt, to a moth that is drawn to her and refuses to die. She slaps her skin, reddens the blue to create a purple so devoid of anything, she lacks the strength to cry. She lacks the will to breathe.

My body is an alligator. Mirrors detest me. Men’s eyes pest me. And every time I blink I am a little less of what I was before. And a little more of what I could’ve been.