The acrobat's daughter
by Annie Katchinska
[ poetry - september 08 ]
ate cream cakes and wrote the word 'beautiful',
unsteadily, in red pen, said "And you have to love yourself"
as she poured the cheap rosé
we choked on, and only liked kissing
outside the tent while inside a pyramid of clowns
toppled over to delighted applause, and she bit
my ear, said clowns were mosaics, didn't
elaborate. She never did. She let me tie clusters of gems
round her ankles and throat, pointed to bruises, sore spots
where gymnasts with whirling batons, magicians
wielding saws, painted lips and hands
had all tried. She cracked her knuckles and spoke German,
smudged red around her eyes, said red
was the colour of disintegration, only I noticed she said
the same thing when her eyes were turquoise, purple,
jade, orange or blue. She let me watch her
practising somersaults on Sunday afternoons; let me
hold her but whispered that a woman's body was
a natural deformity, someone had written that, she said;
let me buy her sweets she dropped
in long grass, like unwanted flowers. All colours hurt.
