B. Anne Adriaens: extracts from ‘GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY’

I’m here

1.

Spawned by burning trees, I inhale a mother’s fear of fire. Craving a
home, I choose to be a stranger. Now I’m a kite flying high, tethered
to a bench at Kelly’s.

Soundwaves roll and churn within these walls, sweet resonance under
my skin. Tunes tumble through me and the undertow conjures longed-
for landscapes on the screen of my eyelids. When the tide recedes, the
room returns with stone floor and peat fire lit for the sake of
authenticity—perhaps.

His shadow rises and I apologise for taking up space. He laughs: of
course, I take up space—I’m alive. A simple fact I now remember,
shifting to let his flip-flopped feet disappear under the table. And as
the rhythm of his bodhrán begins to beat on my eardrums, I let go of
the need to justify my presence.

*

Yet there it sits like a forgotten Bagpuss: old fat furry sadness,
stretching in the small hours—a cuddly familiar yawning the dust off
its whiskers, shedding the odd tear upside down.

5.

Noise-waves rolling left to right and right to left—irritation ad
infinitum as head and tail lights stain the periphery of my vision. I’m
sat on the steps of what’s no longer a hotel—my crow’s-nest-flat
touches the roof, loft space crowded with starlings. There’s no moon
but a book in my lap as I struggle to finish a smoke, curl up on myself
and consider Mother Woodlouse with her offspring—half a dozen
would fit on my pinkie nail—and how she shows them the best way to
negotiate rough cement and grit, the crumbs from old bricks. A spider
peeks from a fissure: I wish it goodnight while the dread of those stairs
weighs on my thighs and locks my arse to the stones.

*

Times I’m not sure I exist. Days I am more earth and tree than me,
when being human means nothing, save the ability to trace thoughts
into words.