23 January 2012
He folded his belongings in the tangerine sunset – Meryl Perez
He folded his belongings in the tangerine sunset by Meryl Perez (20)
My grandfather had fat calluses on his fingers
and toes.
His hands flexed into a skeleton of veins
that were verdigris
on his brass skin.
He would wake up before the sun could tan the streets
and would split the bursting seam of the horizon
with his fingertips.
The morning things knew him:
his thud of foot,
his clockwork of bones
on its post-apocalyptic calm.
By noon he was a power station.
He would double up over the bonnet of his car
strumming the interstices of wirings
and twitching bolts,
and tuning the gyrations
of the engine
to
his
own
palpitations.
For a living
he oversaw arteries of blue prints –
trading in the currency of currents, the jolts of volts,
the buzz and whirr of machinery.
And when it was over,
He neatly folded his limp belongings in a chest
By the tangerine sunset.
In death,
he was a patchwork
of swollen eyes,
sewn eyebrows,
cut lip,
shrivelled feet, hushed hands
rolled in a flap of dirt
one violet dusk.
I imagine those calluses are no more.
His knuckles
Now stubborn bones. His brass skin
Now taut hide. His thud of foot
Absent in the dawn.
His heart
A dry prune
In an empty ribcage.
I imagine
His blueprints have since
Yellowed
Like autumn leaves.
And his granddaughter is all grown up now.