by Keeley Young

January.

 

I used to care about you, January.

            When I was in university, somewhere near the beginning of an arts degree, I didn’t really understand myself. Pieces were missing, shark-toothed jaw-bites, as if I was an art installation about the dangers of swimming in someone else’s territory. Their home. That is something about me you wouldn’t know, I don’t think. How deeply I care for sharks, even if they never take a glance at me. Or never politely, mind you. A shark is ungoverned by the ways of humanity, by the imperfect subtleties of human interaction. They swim, carefree, dangerous, possibly asleep. How I move throughout the world, possibly asleep. A shark knows territory, water mass, the density of hunger and starvation and bloodthirst. A shark does not know what happens when it engages itself in human politics, in the unassassinated want for every human lifeform to be protected and kept wholly a-piece in the water. In each current, each flow. A shark swims, a shark swims alongside you, January.

            In Australia, January is one of the hotter months, and my skin boils in those temperatures. I burn like an orange, distant sun, except I turn red, and I don’t shine. Or I worry I do not shine. You, January, are a warm, sunbaking month, except you are a boy, and we never fell in love with each other.

            I didn’t understand myself, which never would have helped us. When I met you, certain things made sense: I was attracted to you because you are attractive. The colour of your hair, lighter than mine. The way you could become so enthused by your craft, a thing you too were overwhelming yourself with future debt for. How kind you were to me, when I might not have been kind to myself.

            We first met while I was in a relationship, so having any sort of feeling for you would have felt like cheating. When that relationship ended, I tricked myself into thinking something could occur with you. I wrote poetry about unearthed feelings, uncertainties, questions. A shark swam in circles.

            I could never imagine anything true with you.

            And then I would never see you. Not in person.

            And it was okay. Normal.