Haiku
People in the know tell me you can’t experience a haiku moment,
but I’m deliberately unknowing.
Haiku is my own word for two moments in time,
One each side of the cut.
The before and after.
The is and was.
But just now I want to hold both sides in my head,
Their image, feeling and sound
Hovering like a bird over
The line
The Cut
The sliver of time between sleeping and waking.
The before of my naked, untouched skin
And the after-warmth of his hand on my shoulder, when I turn to hear that he loves me.
The moment of standing somewhere so beautiful I want to drink it,
And then its passing, when I say
‘If the world has to stop, then please let it be now’.
The thrill of anticipation, crushed when a word cuts into another truth I had never imagined,
In my worst nightmares.
Haiku, scene shifter, sweeps like a hand in front of my dawning eyes
Bringing the sweetness of honeyed morning toast
with the thin radio voices of children telling me that they have been raped.
The haiku cut
Life to death
Love to hate
The line between whatever it is that comes before, whatever comes next.
