You Have Become a Graphic Novel in my Dreams
Storyboarded
in dazzling scenes
so I can’t go back,
only to the dazzling scenes.
The night after
when you appeared
wearing a billowing nightie;
standing there like a movie ghost
not speaking,
and it was all in the eyes.
I kept yelling You are dead!
You didn’t know.
A week later
you appeared on the back of my motorbike,
adjusted the pressure on the handlebars
to steer
me away from a head-on collision.
Lying for hours on the sofa in the small apartment
surrounded by your plants,
hardly moving as if I was some other animal,
a slow insect
staring ahead
very quiet
very very quiet,
at first I wanted you to come back
but I knew you would be changed,
like a zombie
or a form that looked like you but had a new
malevolence.
I can’t cut you out of the frame
A close-up of an eye
A bead of sweat
A quick spurt of blood
Drool, saliva
A spine slithering away
A wide-brimmed hat with an upturned eye
A manic grin
A hand on a doorknob
A light bulb coming on
The slant of rain on a roof
with the descriptor HISS!