KINGFISHER BLUE

If I were in here much longer,
I think I'd request a paint box
To attempt the shades of blue and green,
And all the seasons in between.

They ultra-sounded my heart, my lungs,
And needled their way in,
And out of scar tissue - old walls,
Built to protect me, crumble.

Traumatised trauma sites -
You could paint me by numbers;
Here vermillion, there magenta,
Everywhere kingfisher blue.

Those were the paints my parents used,
Depleted now. Except where their daughter bruised.

(c) Shaista Tayabali, 2017

I was curled up beside the window, on the word 'vermillion', when one of the rheumatology registrars came by with news of the ultrasound of my heart, latest blood test results and the possibility of parole. Much later that night, blackbirds and wisteria welcomed me home. Outside my bedroom, Mum's 'Kingfisher' approves my return...

Artwork: Kim Glass 'Much Better'
Perveen Tayabali 'Kingfisher' 

On Lymph Island

I live inside a cataract

in a dim and shrinking world

Peel back the blinds!

I bellow

but the clouds just don't hear.

I live inside a lymph node

A mean and shotty mass

I try to kiss it, to calm it,

to shrink it,

but the node just thinks me absurd.

I wrote this poem last year in October immediately after writing The Year of Yes. Poems sometimes tumble out of me one on top of the other, like an afterbirth, a kind of truth telling. The writing of poetry, for me, is the telling of truths that cannot be otherwise told. Etiquette disallows the real grit of chronic illness to be aired or revealed. I use my eyes and smiles for social occasions and my pen for revelation.

The lymph node. Is painful. My biopsy last year diagnosed me with necrotizing lymphadenitis instead of lymphoma, which was cheering. And is, on the whole, fairly painless. Except for one node. The right cervical node. I want to pluck it out of my neck, where it growls at me, thrashing and biting. I want to ignore it or soothe it or laugh it away, but this feverish animal on my neck clings to me.

painting: frida kahlo, self portrait with monkey, 1940