My brother says that he doesn't

understand poetry. He hears the words

but they all intersperse into a polyphonic

whirl of voices; no meaning to them

​

beyond the formation and execution

of sounds upon lips, pressing together

and coming apart. I cannot touch or feel

words, but I see them ‒ the word 'simile'

​

is a grimacing man, poised on the edge

of polite discomfort and anguish. 'Dazzled' is

a 1920s flapper with broad, black eyes

and lank black hair around the edges of

​

her face. A boy in my music class hears

colours ‒ well, not hearing as such, he says,

but images in his mind's eye. People play

tunes and ask him what colour it is, but

​

they play all at once, and he says that it is

the indistinguishable brown of all colours

combined. I think of a boy I used to know

called Orlando, and how this word conjures

​

the sight of a weathered advert for a tropical holiday

in my mind ‒ a forgotten promise, just ephemera

and not to be mentioned. The History room at school smells

like strange, zesty lemons, like the smell when you

​

peel a mandarin and its pores disperse their

sebum into the air, or when you squeeze the juice

from a lemon into your hands, and feel it dissolve

the soapy first layer of skin. I always think of

​

a certain someone when I smell this, even though

they wear a different perfume, and when I listen

to soft guitar ballads I think of them too, even though

I know they wouldn't have heard them. All

​

of the sounds and smells and thoughts blend

into ephemera, scorched postcards of violets and

swallows, etched with the perfect handwriting of

old, consigned to antique stores that smell of

​

smoke. Things of the past with no value, no

substance, just air filled with citrus mist. I collect

each word and strain of what was once fresh in

my mind, in a forgotten jacket pocket, to be discovered

​

on some rainy day, years later. I'll pull out the

postcard and think of the way I always look twice

when I see someone with curly hair; the word 'longing'

is a blue wisp that creeps between the cracks

​

in my fingers. That wisp hides in these things,

tucked away, like the 1930s train tickets I found

in an old book. I wonder if their owner ever made it

to their destination. I wonder who they were.