It’s Like How Every Seventh Wave is the Big One

It’s like how every seventh wave is the big one, and how
You told me that he told you that. It’s like

Having the immense courage to be
Absolutely nobody. Or like how superlatives

Frighten me. Because what if they’re right? It’s somewhere
Close to the big question, the one that asks: what if

I am not an ouroboros, and worse, what if together
We aren’t, either. It’s like how temperature only exists

In binary, to skin. Or how time loses its guilt in the night,
Where nothing is to be done.

It’s probably somewhere deep in the knowledge that to live
And to haunt, are synonymous. Right between

The fear that silence can never mean
Honesty, and the comfort that’s found in knowing

That the right touch can make you a stranger
In your own body. It’s somewhere deep in the placebo

Of pretending that pasture and field aren’t a human landscape. Just like
How the future can only ever be born

From the corpse of before. It’s like how an axe handle remembers
The tree as it swings, and how to be reborn

Is to leave the human canon,
Eternally, which seems so obvious when you say it.

Rory Jamieson is a (frustratingly sporadic) writer, and a (frustratingly full-time) bicycle mechanic. They are based in East London and their work has previously received a Judge's Commendation in the Bedford International Poetry Prize 2020. If you like to natter about bikes, you can find them on twitter: @woijamieson