John Everett Millais, c. 1871
I have one life
and a half. I wake
in the bed’s centre
twisted up, snapping
like an alligator. I wake
in the bathtub, I wake
on a hillside, I wake
with my face
in a cream-cake.
How to contend
with the evening’s mischief?
It’s always the same routine:
count my rings
and count my teeth
search the bed
and the clothes press
for anything which might
have slipped
back into the house
with me. My dimwit
counterpart
hands me back to myself
in fragments. I draw
a twig from my hair, splinters
from my fingers.
Embers shuffle and huff.
Another fire she’s lit
at my expense. I wonder:
can I really be liable
if memory’s amanuensis
took no notice?
I shudder
at the slow might
of the ocean’s report,
its hollow boom, the spray’s
splatter and clap.
My other inhabitant
is not so anxious. She steps
flush to the edge. She has
unwavering faith
in her balance.
Her sleep, my life,
must be so easy:
painless, dreamless.
Chloe Wilson is the author of two poetry collections, The Mermaid Problem and Not Fox Nor Axe, which was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. She received equal first prize in the 2016 Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the 2018 Bristol Short Story Prize.