"Portrait" (c. 2014, Augustine Dunn)
A vivid poem by Esther Morgan, picked for the late Capricorn Sun, Gemini Moon, and surrounding planetary weather. Luna floats across from Saturn in Sagittarius, and will move past Saturn tomorrow morning to oppose Venus in the sign of the Archer by the night.
The ghost of this house
is forgetting to believe in me
despite the feathers I hold to my lips,
the hearts drawn in the mist
of breathed-on windows.
She misses the evidence laid out
for her to find — a strand of hair on a pillowcase,
telltale tissue kisses in the bin,
my fingers printing the white walls
with forensic blossom.
Nothing impinges --
my existence hinges on a draught
angled through a half-open door,
her shoulder blades’ slight shiver
as she walks through me.
At night I make myself scarce,
haunting the edges of the darkness,
she is mistress of, lost
in the muted television’s
occasional light snow.
When she’s asleep, I seat myself
at her dressing table’s triptych
tilting the mirrors this way and that,
trying to catch in the infinity of rooms
the flit of a face.
Perhaps I’m only the complex
origami of her dream — my filmsy skin
is becoming less convincing,
I worry at my argument of bone,
unnerved to detect
in this slow diminishment
a sense of coming home:
content to step aside in the empty kitchen,
to make room for the still life of knives,
the proved bread.
Esther Morgan, “The Ghost of This House”
The ghost of this house
is forgetting to believe in me
despite the feathers I hold to my lips,
the hearts drawn in the mist
of breathed-on windows.
She misses the evidence laid out
for her to find — a strand of hair on a pillowcase,
telltale tissue kisses in the bin,
my fingers printing the white walls
with forensic blossom.
Nothing impinges --
my existence hinges on a draught
angled through a half-open door,
her shoulder blades’ slight shiver
as she walks through me.
At night I make myself scarce,
haunting the edges of the darkness,
she is mistress of, lost
in the muted television’s
occasional light snow.
When she’s asleep, I seat myself
at her dressing table’s triptych
tilting the mirrors this way and that,
trying to catch in the infinity of rooms
the flit of a face.
Perhaps I’m only the complex
origami of her dream — my filmsy skin
is becoming less convincing,
I worry at my argument of bone,
unnerved to detect
in this slow diminishment
a sense of coming home:
content to step aside in the empty kitchen,
to make room for the still life of knives,
the proved bread.
Esther Morgan, “The Ghost of This House”