The dull chock of carrots, free-wheeling
turmeric circles on the chopping board
say I am home again. The creaking of the eaves
against the retreating sky speak of cold windows,
the eyelash-and-louse tobacco loose
in the top-right-hand draw smells
like my father’s office, half a world of time away.
In the garden a lemon tree entwines
with my old cat, locking familiar elbows
with his grey bones. If time was a constant
and a life was a sausage, I would stretch
down the street where I have banged
shopping trolleys home with melting ice-cream,
to the lake where the rotting gums of the shore sprout
moustaches, across the ocean to grimy blue-ceramic alleys,
lipstick flowers, arched bridges, and back to the dark furls of the city’s
nightscape, flickering reptile tongues of light on the water.
But the knot would be thickest here, the house at the focus of this warm
borrowed intestine, protuberant with memories, this pretzel
of animal sacrifices.

Tegan Jane Schetrumpf

Roving was first published in Contrappasso.