Sun strokes neck
light splinters green
light too strong to
gaze into.

…………………………………………………………………………………

Hands become eyes to probe, another Doctor murmurs loss of hope, I have two huge brown eyes that meet in the wrong place, that see the world as it really is a crazy paving of bizarre situations. Words turn upon themselves. Hospital bed, slow majestic arc of wooden fan above my head, lines of small boys on green stretchers, blood between their sheets, this place used to be a prison, Changi hospital where the Japanese starved their polite English prisoners. I don’t know just what it is they’re going to do, but a seven year old doesn’t have the power of choice, sickly smell of anaesthetic, oblivion reigns. Waking to the slow whirr of wooden fan but seeing nothing, bandages tight across my eyes and nurses whisper bring drinks and plates of food, but I can’t seem to find my mouth and my ears won’t digest the clamour of broken Chinese syllables. The light when it comes is huge and abhorrent, I duck for peaceful shadows, stay away from mirrors; wipe the sticky mess from face each morning. Suddenly clouds are longed for, I have two huge brown eyes that are nearly perfectly straight, but they lie.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

In those dark tropical nights I could watch the fruit bats wide as vampires, screech through the mango trees, but it was always the moths blindly fluttering towards light bulbs, candles, any soft sheltered room that froze me. Last night a moth battered itself senseless against my blind and I woke wound in my sheets with my child’s heart pounding.