Allegra Pilati

Sometimes I go to the house at the end of the street and sit there for hours, picking at the wallpaper. It flecks off piece by piece and no one knows that I’m the reason why the house looks like that. No one believes that I could have done it. I make tears big enough to walk through. I have no need for them, but I hold them up to the light and watch them flake away from themselves. Weathering around the beams. Soon this will all be nothing but a skeletal structure. A picture of a lifetime. The finest thing you have ever seen . ­­ I draw a match to my tiny hairs. I glow in the light, for as long as I can bare it. I couldn’t tell you what’s changed. I couldn’t tell you why instinct says was, instead of is. Why I won’t be beautiful anymore when I’m all glacial and melting. When it misses me. When it comes back to me. It waits in its comfortable silence to see how I will react because it doesn’t want me to be afraid. But I am afraid. And ...

The first time I went through our doors I was carried. The house was then a literal skeletal structure, bare bones, exposed foundations and frames in need of not a fresh coat of paint but every coat. I imagine before I was born there was no end to the similarities that could be drawn between my existence and this house. Possibilities wrapping around the foundations as the skin and cells coiled around my body. Personality and character simmering between the air in the rooms as I slowly became someone within myself, and little revelations in a finger or floorboard allowed us both to slowly take form.                        Having a baby is a big step. For my parents, I was no longer an idea or a concept, I was a person. They didn’t have any time left to prepare, there was no going back, I was here and I would be for a very long time. Looking around at the house we were in just...

They said darling let’s sing a happy song They said Come on, won’t you sing along? I said Why would I sing a happy song? When everything is going wrong? They said come on let’s write a symphony I said How strange it seems to me That we would dance to this melody sowed and throws in anarchy Hear the birds, hear the reeds dripping honey and melody They are Not what they seem to me They are Not what they seem to be Though flicking buttons in the dark Go pearlescent when they start to spark you’re determined To leave your mark caring not what becomes of you Judgement burns through and fair kind disposition and poison air It was your hands That drove us there Understand Bruise and care Come on let’s sing a happy song They can’t save us From where we belong They can’t save you You’ve been gone to long Singing a happy song and behind you, is your battle field save me, guide me, be my shield Refuse to y...

Freedom Burning on my skin Wayward faces steeped in sin are escaping me Freedom Graywacke hells all sing while nestling shells all ring up against the sea Speak with me at salty sea oblivion Be with me on the borders of anguish and time Reach for me Through the thick of cries and tricks of minds in gaps in peeling plaster on prison walls Freedom While liquid silver fails and shines avid rivers walk the line between you and I Freedom I am waiting Constantly pacing anticipating and knowing of you Freedom All I ask of you In all that you do Send it through the wind Freedom Dancing in holy light Master the dream and fight Seethe and strive and divides us I believe in a stone through In places that felt in winds that know In layers of concrete that crack to give you sand How easy it is How easy I find How easy to give and lose you mind And all that I have, for a chance to understand ...