Spill - Cadence Chung

 

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I'll spill      into the next moment

    I’ll spill     into the past

where the thrumming of cars and buzzing

of starlings were a given; now, only

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the starlings sing, hesitantly, like their

   cries could pierce the silence, pop our

bubbles like glass. I dream of all the museums

in Wellington, all of the art with no-one to view it.

 

Away from prying eyes and greasy human hands

I wonder if the past will come up with its own narrative

I wonder if the paintings come to life, the figures kissing

   confiding secrets in waxy meadows

 

but this is simply my fancy. It has rained for the past 

few days and what would have been a cosy hum 

  and a keen excuse to stay inside is now 

        a heady trap. I'll spill back

 

into what was always temporary; the decline of Rome

   didn't show its face as such, but just spilt and spilt and spilt until-

I'll spill back, let my teeth retract, my bones curl into smaller

     forms, my eyes widen with wonder. When the present becomes

 

a heady haze, and the only solid memory is your last meal

   the past splashes its sepia tones at your eyes until you cannot help

but look at what it is showing you. I think back

     to when I was young, and memorised books for fun ‒ now

 

whenever I skim through a page, it is already half-past-ten

    at night, yet I still haven't gotten anything done. I'll spill

again, into the vivid greens and snap of leaves beneath feet, of

      tauhou swimming through the air in blurs of olive, singing

 

like the world has never been brighter. For them, this is just

     another rainy autumn, another dance in their short 

lives, another chance to live before tomorrow 

    swoops in. Tomorrow ‒ I'll slip into

 

tomorrow, though I try not to, and wonder what it will

     look like. People joke that this is the end of the world

but I think it is simply the end of what we thought tomorrow

       might have been. Things will be different; everything

 

we've made has always been temporary, always changed

    morphed, shrunk, crumbled into dust and scribbled poetry. We

marvel at ruins and never seem to realise that we will

     become ruins someday, too. I find it strange to think

 

that this will be in history books, yet I'm still staring out

the window at the ocean like it's any other day, and yet

       unlike any other day I've ever had. There's something about the sea

     that mesmerises ‒ its eternal motion, perpetually raging. Anyway ‒ I'll 

 

spill back into the moment, into the dull computer screen and books, and

     spill into the glimmer of fireworks on the beach, spill

     into the thrum of rain on the roof, into the crush of green beneath my feet, into

 the next moment, and the next, and take each day one moment 

    at a time.