On waking

Toes on the window sill

Strain with urgency.

Little chips of ancient paint

Break and float away

(Revealing a previous coat

By a now-forgotten tenant).

Calves dimple up hard and taut

Revealing a truer inner intent.

Toes on the window sill

Turn white around the edges

Blood thrums in louder and redder.

Heels feel weightless and skinless

Against the back of brown thighs.

Toes quiver now, some lose grip,

She readjusts her position.

Sits still on a borrowed window sill

(She’ll look like a brooding bird from below,

Nothing further from the barren truth)

And surveys the neighbour’s water tank.

Toes now cold as her hair and neck,

She dreams of flying, she dreams of drowning,

She has given up living now, in sepia

screens of her errant dreamscapes

and the newer bluer colours frighten her still,

so she haunches over the still awake world,

and contemplates living on;

Sitting on her toes on a borrowed sill

neither drowning, nor flying.