Metamorphi, Admissions From an Adult Daughter & Decomposing
Poetry by Luminitza Manea
Spring Day by Indra O. (2023)
Metamorphi
(After Jorie Grahm)
One grey morning, youth collapsed into one grey morning. Lighter than
these years should be. Most plastic
trinkets in land
fills I will never
see. But I can almost hear the whistle blown through the debris onto which we project
memories. All those novelty
keychains and souvenirs from vacation
havens, all those ghostly possessions are memento
mori artifice. I was
young
once.
Kneeling to toads
not god. I wanted butterflies to land on me without having to touch them.
Now I am older and can learn
new trades. I can recognize my capriciousness. How
prodigal my dreams can be.
Like commissioning a stained glass Lepidoptera. I repent
to the flutter of light.
Will you forgive me
for making
altars
that do not decompose? For making an art of by
standing, on those grey mornings,
fixing eyes on the sky and waiting
for my vision to hold a completely
new series of clouds. We all raced
raindrops. We all complain about
light pollution. Did you also
Catch toads in the creek behind your elementary school
even when Miss Caroll and Miss Danielle said it was out of
bounds? Even when Nicole, who kissed
you
in the blanket fort, said touching the toads
would make you
Sick? We still can’t outsmart toads, but maybe
we respect them enough
not to name them all Wilbur or
try to catch them. Maybe now
I can imagine the sky as blanket fort,
and protect it as fiercely as I did that miniature empire I built by the craft closet,
Where I was loved or at least interesting enough
to experiment with. Maybe
she, that little girl,
made me anew. Made me obsessional. I am grown
up girl backstroking in galaxies of potential. The energy current, the plashless butterfly.
Words folded in on their sounds, that glottal stop—The hanging clause
grammars our conversations into silence:
We cannot survive like this.
I’m not here to preach old ironies—read excerpts from the bestselling book on deforestation or shepherd you to the server farms that have been harvesting every view of anthropogenic horrors or, instead, every view of anything else.
I can’t find my voice in all these sublime gardens and birds that are not birds but are hope and grief and poetry.
The creek is so saturated with chemicals, we could develop film in it. Create new memories. I pull tiny machines from the current, knot the debris together until I can pull it over my head and feel loved.
I want butterflies to land on me without having to ruin their wings.
To be armoured in monarchs.
To be still.
I want to apologise to the reincarnations of my late bettas that couldn’t teach me tenderness. I am grieving now: This is the preamble to my apocalypse
and I already know the ending. But is that what matters?
Do we wake up to see the sunset? Dry the river to see the bottom?
Have these metaphors ever made sense?
Am I so blinded by aesthetics?
I don’t know what is happening to me, but it seems almost
familiar.
Hindsight is such a privilege.
I am still here.
I am still
As the clouds. Which is to say,
I am slowly moving
towards a completely new vision.
Admissions From an Adult Daughter
I did not inherit reciprocity. I never gardened but there were always petunias at my front door. My conscience still unconscious, still napping after the commotion of being born blessing And not burden.
My understanding of love still needed the crusts cut off its sandwiches and yet I was not child. Specimen to lawyers, prodigy to teachers, puzzle to people who had the most time to know me. The missing pieces were you.
I learned obligation and isolation. I lived with them for two years after I left home. I still have dreams of them stabbing you with broken bottles. Yes, home. Because the petunias. Because my brother. Because I grieve you every time I think about the world ending, which is often
These days.
Time heals because we are forgetful creatures.
Like the birthmark on my back, I only remember the traces of you when I am looking for them or When my lover points to the spot and says “What is the history of this?” I thought everyone had them.
I bleach my hair.
I stop wearing your clothes.
(I still make myself the scapegoat.)
(I still miss your cooking.)
I do not need my guilt absolved and now your tenderness is so foreign I can only take an afternoon
Before the novelty wears off and again you are consoling me with the promise that things would be
Different. And they are different now, but your hand cannot reach my back. If you washed, I would have dried. If you had spoken, I wouldn’t have screamed. If you apologised,
I would tell you it was unnecessary
Because you already have—it’s in the rent and vet bills, it's in my brother’s report card on the fridge,
It's in the sourdough and zacuscă and every story I tell when I know you’re listening. I don’t think understanding can be reciprocal,
But I’m trying my best
Just like you were.
Decomposing
I am decomposing—
unlacing cobwebs strand by strand,
boiling the salt out of the ocean
One pail
At a time—
And the world ossifies into a shell,
Frequencies
uncoiling
Into a single note
Sung by a phantom wind.
I try to harmonize but my vocal chords hum on different octaves.
On different sides of a debate:
How to best pronounce the word silence.
I am always defeating the purpose of things.
Insignificance is so easy.
Stems of weeds and wildflowers pinched between my fingers,
I coax those frail lives from the ground,
Slipping every root from the soil.
With my fingernail, I slit the throats of dandelions to see hollowness instead of feeling it.
Soon—the trees
Are plucked and scrubbed in my kitchen sink
Until the bark peels
away like dead skin off my hands.
I am taking
ev
er
y thi
n g
apart,
I am finding truth in tree rings and palms and ways of unmaking.
We can only swallow little pieces—
our mouths can only fit so many words.
I am breaking all of the plates in the cupboard
And serving a feast on each of the shards.
I am digesting until my stomach grows acidic teeth and eats itself too.
The pain will confuse the meanings of glut and hunger.
When there is nothing left in the soil, is it a grave?
Am I a Reaper?
Do I pronounce silence by creating absence?
Isn’t
emptiness
deafening?
Luminitza Manea (she/they) is a third-year student at the University of Guelph majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing and Studio Art. They intend to innovate new forms that combine visual and literary art. As a poet, Luminitza aspires to distill truths (no matter how small or subjective) by decomposing the logic of language and collaging elements such as being present in an uncomfortable world and body, nature’s birth and decay, truth, and the small marvels of the everyday. Luminitza is interested in experimenting with alternative forms of storytelling and translating poetry into physicality, movement, and site-specific experiences.