For Angus
Terraced amid blue mountains, rocking your grandmother's chair. A doctorbird needles nectar, fireflies strike nitrous air, flame trees hung with blue glass taunt restless duppies, as haunted by Anansi we weave webs with playful care.
You feed me poisonous ackee and roadside fruits from a tree you stop to climb. Guinep-stained fingers reaching cautiously for mine, we joke the only way to eat mango is butt-naked in a shower. So we did. There's no rush, you reassure...soon come. Island time.
Splitting open sweet orange flesh I taste your name, scarlet hibiscus on my pillow unfolds a petalled flame and I kiss your hot, salty face, and taste rum-caned breath, fallen beneath decaying grandeur; the mask of colonial shame.
I trace bullet holes with fingertips, herbs stolen with youthful panache from Marley's garden. Green days burning leaves to ash. Bodies electrified by touch in lagoons of phosphorescence, slaking thirst on watermelon slices and in hollowed curves of calabash.
Your love was always gesture; no airy words filling nervous spaces. You were my lover: You are my love. One love. Abandoned to the riddim of those steel drum paces we dance on in beating rain, tears streaming down our faces. Suzanne Fairless-AItken
