Bowie
by Lavinia Greenlaw

I’m a girl who looks like a boy who looks like a girl
and everything is going to be alright.
The one I will love when I’m old enough to love
is waiting for me out there on the street
among the puddles and cardboard boxes
wearing emerald lurex and a gold crest.

His attributes, including his boyness,
will be reversible and I will learn that mine are too.
One of these is that he has several voices;
he sounds like loose straw or a bowl of water
overturning in a bowl of water, or a mountain king.

He has the ability to detach himself from himself
in order to reform.
He will teach me to offer something to look at
in order not to be seen, that in order to be heard
I must not repeat myself.

He will always be leaving, walking backwards,
and singing even after the door is closed.
He is gone, exiled to the flat fields.
We can dance to this, we can perfect our routine.

#poem #poetry #Bowie