the soul tends to hide deep beneath the blues • & pain has chosen to call blues beautiful • & pain could not have seen things differently • when someone owns a thing we call it their possession • & yet what do we call it when some sinister spirit has entered them? • of curtains that are mostly drawn • of a blues felt more intimately with the eyes closed • slow song for a masochist • a gentle tapping of feet • bassist under collagen of bones • bassist of a chest-deep beating • & some no longer look their friends in the eyes • others have not noticed themselves becoming islands • sunlight as a clarity reflected by water • moonlight as uncertainty reflected by water • drown under sounds of a profound saxophone sorrow • soak in softening passages of pain moving through the body • a falsetto waters the seeds of anguish • protruding from the mouth • the roots of a soul reaching for light
—Sihle Ntuli (Aquifer: The Florida Review Online)