& friday nights always end like this

Himaja Wijesinghe

here is the killing thing and its teeth. 

here, the rain bruises everything in sight 
& doesn’t wait for redemption. 

out of all the things i left behind: a womb that tried to birth
itself / pulsing, pulsing 

here is the alchemy of grief, this non-human
inheritance. something murmuring under my skin again. 

you must know this. you can swallow the sun 
& still find ways to run out of light. here i am breathing 

& breathing for a concept that does not exist. look at us, softer in this
light. some god is making his way back to us 

& i forgot which street i tried to set on fire. 
no synonym for home here, home as in the wound 

we left in its place. wound as in i am the only living thing
the sky has left. which is to say: i think i’m bulletproof 

now—or my skin misses the bullet. 
& i thought we widowed this side of summer / 

the one with the fangs. this swelling sickness 
& the overgrown silence of it. 

we were only seventeen & pulling the shoreline apart, 
seventeen & silkless. 

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Himaja Wijesinghe is a Sri Lankan-Australian student who spends way too much time reading and writing poetry when she should be studying instead. She currently resides in Melbourne.

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