Laura Tuthall
Darkroom (2016)
same t-shirt for days
I’m looking out my little window
with my tired little eyes
thinking of getting out
getting outside
getting my hands
on everyone else’s time
getting to move
it’s like being locked in a darkroom
with nothing to develop
but your own dark thoughts
and some old pictures in boxes
that’s me I see running free
on the golden hills
but I don’t remember
going there at all
I woke up from a dream
with the color of a melody
I laid it out on the keys
poured over and over
I worked with dull hope
for weeks and then months
but the paint dried up
the negative me
that’s all I’m exposing
a miniature, inverted version’s
all that they see
but that’s not enough for me
I know what I could be
and it’s so much –
more
a funny word for
a bridge without its mainland
out from the island edge
to a foggy end
lamenting at four in the morning
a wish only death can free
they say it’s like falling asleep
but I’d have to stop dreaming
trade in velvet synapses
for blank abandoned staves
same day on repeat
I’m looking out
I’m looking in
I am remembering
that paracosm girl
she’s dead
I miss her head
the liquid thoughts
the clouds beneath my feet
being happy to be
locked in my darkroom
with nothing to develop
but the landscapes inside me
I went back to the dirt
to the dry and worn out riverbeds
I poured all my water down
cried over and over
I wet the dormant red
it deepened and bled
and I almost touched
a delta but
the negative me
that’s all I’m exposing
a miniature inverted version’s
all I can see
but that’s not enough for me
I know what I could be
and it’s so much –
more
a funny word for
a structure not yet heard by
years
out from the neuron edge
to a network of unknown gears
composing at four in the morning
a gift only life can leave
and trusting that time will expand
what now is still stuck in
REM sleep
and incomplete conduits
like swallows bent south
like seedlings bent skyward
that’s how I’ll be making myself:
day by day by day