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If I could recreate reality

Published by Ilva Pieterse on 9 March, 2015

If I could recreate reality
I’d soften the finality
Of your forced farewell.

I’d make it so
That I can peel
Your every kiss-shaped memory
From my skin
And keep them in a tin.

So that when I miss
Your goey lips
Against my cheek or chin
I’d simply take them out
And let them kiss themselves
Onto my skin again.

If I could recreate reality
I’d lessen the enormity
Of my endless emptiness.

I’d sew a song
Into the you-shaped hole
Of longing your life left
Imprinted on my soul.
A never-ending
Heart-mending singsong
To fill me and
Fulfill me.

But wait…

If I could recreate reality
I’d have no use for tinned kisses
Or pointless paltry poetry
Or stitches in my soul.

Because you’d be here.
And I’d be whole.

– This was written for my baby girl who recently passed away – 12 days after her first birthday.

Wonde wonderwerk

Published by Ilva Pieterse on 5 July, 2011

Ek het ons storie geskryf
Met ‘n lem op my lyf
Die son was te helder daai dag
Vir my hartklop om langer vir joune te wag.

Ek het die mes soos ‘n kwas vas gehou
En diep snye geskilder – ‘n van Gogh vir jou.

Ons verhaal het verskyn
Op my vel – lyn by lyn
En dit was helder – so rooi, so vol lewe daai pyn
Ek was seker dat die seer in my siel sal verdwyn.

Die letters van jou naam
Het bebloede kuns geword
Op al my breekbare vlaktes.

Soos ‘n straatbrak het ek jou vertrou
Waar is jy nou?
Hoe waar is jy nou?

Daai dag het die son so helder geskyn
En daar was net te veel kleur in ons samesyn
Ek het jou les diep in my spiere gekerf
En my lyf met jou lou-warm liefde geverf.

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…