Swallow

The brown of her eyes bubbles truer in the white sunlight. The worn-out elegance of her flesh…how she’s moving to the old jazz again.
The brilliance of her wrinkled skin under the light. Good God, I can’t believe my eyes.
I first saw her at ten; my mouth was full of mango and she was panting in the dark air; her jagged breaths made me tremble. All that sweating, all her foolish excess. Her incessant dancing made me stop under the glow of the streetlight and stare, lips parted in wonder.
In the depth of night she would let out through the neighbourhood, this laughter of hers that thrills and cripples. I asked my mother what the matter with her was. I asked her why she shook like that and ate life that way.
My mother shielded my eyes, whispering “Don’t look at her. She makes love with the devil.”
I grew up and understood that she’s the kind of woman that can’t bear the thought of dying with a whimper, with no bruises on her knees. This is why she announces herself like a wound breaking open. With puss, with odour, with ugly blood.
I burn when I glimpse her around town, dodging pain with moonlight strung around her neck. Heavy-lidded, skull pumped with all kinds of colourful drugs. Despair can’t catch her, I’ve heard it tried; she just never sat still enough for it to sink its teeth in. In the jumble of rain, in the baffling darkness, she was the only shape that remained.
She has aged now, a parchment yellowed by heavy time, by heavy moths. I grew up wading in her urgency, I had my first kiss with an eye on her dancing. Now, her wonderful mind is sagging, but as before she can’t stand still, twirling and twirling, eating life this rotten way, she just can’t bear to let a crumb fall, all this joy and fear, she doesn’t want to let anything go. Her mouth is bloated with how she swallows this world.