Under My Sofa

Underground utopia

An oily sunflower sun sears the soft skin that stretches across the shape of a spine that juts sharply from the peak of the back's mountainous landscape
Prickling the short hairs that salute as soldiers serious enough that even smiles seldom suggest security especially when they stand to attention at the neck's nape
Shivering with side-effects of exposure even as the flesh blisters to screeching red and the hairs separate from their roots and make stealthy escape

Light laces up and down unsuspecting eyes leaving rapidly flickering lids like dimming bulbs and ladders of lashes that aren't quite long enough
Lips cracked and parched like lofty peaks and low-lying troughs lined with flaky skin that acts as slate; horizontally even but vertically rough
Previously silky swathes of soft-spun skin shifted as desert sand around the planes of muscle and bone but it cracked as drought and sunlight beat until silk was leather-tough

Sold to the elements that held domain over the outside world as though the cured hide does not hold a person inside
Curled up as worn as a wizened old woman and as fragile as a foetus with flickering fear scorching the frost-bitten faith that chooses to hide
Laying on leaf-litter that shifts and resets to hold the imprint of a lonely person that picked it as a final place to reside

And sucks with the long-forgotten gentleness of a peaceful lover at the brutalised leather skin that covers and covets the innocence within
Until leaves march in their armies from protectively arching branches in the name of liberation and preparation and alleviating damnation at the root of all sin
Landing in pile upon pile of fiery banners that mask their purpose of extinguishing flames and hiding from the steely sky the spines and skin

Until eventually the broken body sinks towards the centre of the earth as soil shelters it from the savage weather and roots pull it into a loving embrace
The surrounding earth as unmade as the shattered spirit and body, unrecognisable and unlike what it used to be, leaves of strikingly delicate skeletons of lace
But soil so different from anything than it had every been offers itself wholly and irrevocably to helping others thrive, their identity gone without a trace

The earth swallowing you is not a mark of tragedy or burial but a welcoming home from the things that once were simultaneously more and less than they are now
No grave but an embrace from an old friend that would give everything to help you become something new rather than returning to the old person that the seasons broke, but they disavow
It's an open invitation to and underground utopia of an abundance of shimmering silence and ruby red rest that is everything that the world above would never allow

***

Sometimes I think I'd settle for never-ending isolation and silence with a small space pressing reassuringly around me.

Then I realise that I love people and motivation and debate and stimulation and energy and movement.

But I think I'm still an introvert deep down, and I'll always long for some kind of peace. I cannot wait until I have some kind of tiny little flat or room to myself, because that would honestly be heaven.

Alex xxx