Sapphirism

black tyres. brown puddle. white kitten.  slate bump. slight crunch. sick churn. brown tyres. red puddle. dead kitten.

We read about it in our history books and see it in the daily news: humans turning arms against one another, whole cities exploding in a plume of smoke and ash, animals being brutalised to serve our greed, species of numerous organisms driven to the verge of extinction and countless other cruelties. For all our glorious achievements of mapping the stars and stripping the atom down to its quarks, we humans are selectively blind to the hurt we have inflicted upon the planet and its people. We put on a veil of indifference that allows us to ignore issues like racism, gun violence, climate change, and terrorism when they do not affect us directly. We allow our prejudices to take root and prevent us from feeling pain for the black man who was murdered by a white police officer. We turn the other way when we see the transgender girl being kicked out of her family for the “outrageous crime” of being born into the wrong body. We forget all about the dog who was crippled by an overspeeding mini

my mother’s drawer is a magpie’s nest. her restless treasures sizzle under the scant sunlight. her watchful, furtive, darting eyes. then her hands slam the drawer shut. she flares at my longing stares. don’t you touch it or i’ll have your guts for garters. mummy and daddy are out until noon. i slip, slither, slide. gleam. swoon. head plunged into a cold green chest filled with gold watches that don’t tick and teardrop-shaped pearls and my pretty china doll that mum claimed was lost. (hiss.) there’s a box the size of a Frooti pack. on the cover’s a handsome man with tousled hair. a woman with parted lips trails a digit down his chiselled chest. the picture of a strawberry. it looks like Dark Fantasy and Fruit-tella had a baby. the offspring of two forbidden fruits, staring right at me. fervent fingertips tear through the tin foil and pull out a pink ringed soft rubber and taste it. bland. sticky. the raised isometric dots like goosebumps on my tongue. what is this thing? grownups have