Aqueous

by Nicole Jacobsen

His living room is a vivarium
full of filtered sunshine

gasping through storm clouds,
releasing rain that trembles

puddles on cement, warping sky.
Water circles clutch glass

like suctioned starfish, we kiss
as he passes. I scratch poetry

between blue lines, deliberating 
the nucleus of a syllable.

Menthol breeze ripples 
my arms and small hairs, raising 

bubble wrap skin. Synaesthesia insists 
his footsteps are pine.

I’m fine here, while he works, watching peace 
lilies animate on the table, 

my body creaking
like a new home beginning to settle. 

Nicole Jacobsen is a Brisbane artist, writer, poet, and aspiring editor who regularly finds herself re-befuddled by the difference between who and whom. Her background in Psychology emerges through character studies, obsessive bouts of self-reflection, and recurrent themes of mental health in her work.