I Write Her

Rêver

I thought of you dying as 
a dream I could not hold onto
the mote dust glittering in 
slow pilgrimage, such stillness
a beneficence to one hour
marked by nothing aside
the sugar ants collating on window
where they go, I cannot say
it is as if a crystal exists somewhere
with all the answers
whilst I live among tall trees
seeking, always seeking sky.

Soulagement

It wasn’t that I woke up one day
marmalade stains on the cuff of my best white shirt 
and thought “I’m better now”
It wasn’t that a bird flew past my window, green beak, violet tips on length of wing, searching sky
and thought “this doesn’t hurt anymore”
The garden wasn’t quieter, but somewhere, among tall trees thirsting for early summer
ain, where spiders chanced translucence and red ants marched relentless 
I found myself and she smiled, that lopsided grin of childhood, the one lost in tree houses
and sticky hands of long ago friends 
and said, “come run with me, until your lungs burn and you laugh without reason, scratching your legs and burning your shoulders in the season of NOW.”

Depth

I want to bleed violet in time with the
moon’s cycles and summon my blood
again
for it was only when I lay beneath you
seeing nothing but the blink of capture
in a room too hot to touch
that for a second I felt whole
and then it was gone
sealed away again
in wax paper and bandages
where people grow up and put
the depth of their truth.

The Bloom & the Love

Blind spots can seem like flowers
wrong turns like experienced lovers …
but when you wake without knives in your chest
breathe for the first time, feeling no fear
you’ll realize you never needed flowers
you need yourself, showing up every day
creating your own freedom by facing what
keeps you afraid & letting it know
it only has power, if you give it permission
& you don’t, not any more, not ever again
you’re done, & you’re the only one in control. 
You refuse destruction & choose resilience.
You become the bloom & the love.

Revolution

Whomever said leaving a place doesn’t change anything
was not born running 
was not blackmailed 
was not lost, seeking escape.
Whomever said it’s not where you live
did not grow up without choice.
Sometimes it IS the place
sometimes it IS the people,
When you disentangle yourself from your past & outgrow it
when you find ways to defend yourself against ghosts
when you fight for yourself instead of against yourself
that’s when you taste freedom
& you never, ever go back to imprisonment.

Wound

Your existence might have begun in neglect
the wide yawn of mistakes and ill-timed apathy. But from that
place of scouring and shadows—you became. Just as the unwanted
feral in us, is found by a lover. Not sharing the same blood—almost
strangers, discovering a language, bound on the bread of longing
to matter. 

The Ghost on Stage with me

hasn’t learned the convex rule of eye-make-up-removal
taking hard cloth to watering eyes, wiping roughly in hope
I think, of removing everything not just glitter and tears
caught in the fine wax of whatever concocts a glow
as faux as caught breath with applause, when all along
you burned for that, consumed like fire-eater
the singing praise whiskering around old stage and
your aching bones, keeping, it is said, death from the door
by always wearing your finery and never ever
letting your mask slip.

Masked Flight

They took all the cold from the land
even the frost that has become eternal and hard
as precious stone
until we couldn’t remember any longer what cold
felt like and only the determining sun and its
light, unable to keep out, hungry
for our secrets, folding itself in specters and
shallows, a filigree without beauty
turning my stomach sour when I thought too long
and let my guard
slip. There is an odd resistance to becoming
an old version of yourself
how, in the periphery of the pantomime
you learn unexpectedly, what began the march
and what ended it.

~~~

Candice Louisa Daquin is an immigrant of French/Egyptian descent. She worked in publishing in Europe before immigrating to America to become a Psychotherapist. She edits for Raw Earth Ink, Tint Journal, The Pine Cone Review, Writers Resist, Life & Legends, Parcham Literary Magazine & Queer Ink. 

Her piece, Phantasma, featured in 2022, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Daquin’s debut novel The Cruelty, can be found HERE. You can find her reblogs, features, and interviews on TSI HERE.

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