MY FATHER'S LUNGS
Pascale Petit
All day I have been shrinking
and my father has been turning transparent.
There were moments in our conversation
when I held his soul
in a little tuft of eagle down,
while his dressing-gown and pyjamas
glowed like clothes of light
he must practise wearing.
We've drunk two bottles of champagne -
now that I've begun to see the entire
fauna of a forest in him.
It's like looking at a glass frog -
I can see through his clear blue skin
into his heart. But I'm no longer interested
in whether he loves me or not,
or if he really thought of me
every day of his years away.
I'm looking at those luminous trees
growing in his rib cage,
to replace his choked lungs.
I'm piercing his body membrane -
I'm so small now, it's like the skin of a sky
I can fly through, into his chest.
His lungs are white, shining
like X-rays in this twilight.
They branch in all directions
in a left and right garden,
separated by a stream.
His breath is separating into four winds -
the white, black, red and blue
that make coloured sounds, and sometimes
an octave of pure silver
as I watch an upper branch
burst into a swirl of starlight.
The grass is red, and wafts my feet
towards my next task -
I am gathering lungmoss for my pillow,
making a bed in his body.
