JO GATFORD
My Sister, Pareidolia
You see Jesus in a tortilla and a rabbit
on the moon; your sister’s sorrow in the heart
of an apple and your own
in the scrap of wallpaper that lines
your underwear drawer.
If you tighten your eyes just right you can still see it;
the falling ceiling of your parents’ bedroom—
a magic eye picture descending
if you lie still enough and long enough
—close enough to wave your fingers through but
touch it and
it’s gone.
You see disapproval in car headlights, malevolence
in safety glass—your sister jerking the wheel
just to scare you; singing harmonies to songs your parents
danced to, younger than you are now, two little birds
sitting cross-legged in the back room spinning 45s
at double-speed helium—
Do you ever imagine just ploughing straight
into the central reservation?
she says, easy as flipping the tape
when the chorus cuts off
mid-line.
You see watch-eye windows and door-maw mouths
swallowing you home. You map the cracks
in the plaster—an Artex mountain range between
you and then.
You see her
in asphalt, in spiralling water, in your own laugh when it barks—
when you know you’ve landed a good one—in the way
she tilts her head, pirate-squinted,
the way she could outstare the void,
her finger and thumb lined up
just so
to pluck down the moon;
the way you always believed
she could.
Jo Gatford writes flash disguised as poetry, poetry disguised as flash, and sometimes things that are even longer than a page. Her work has most recently been published in The Forge, trampset, Pithead Chapel and SmokeLong Quarterly. She is the co-founder of @writers_hq and occasionally tweets about weird 17th-century mermaid tiles at @jmgatford. She wants to live on your bookshelf.