Caustics by Cinzia DuBois

Cinzia DuBois is an Edinburgh-based poet whose writing is intrinsically influenced by philosophy and classicism. She performed some of her poetry for the first time at A New World!?, an event co-hosted by The Ogilvie and Interrobang?!, in April of this year; though new to the poetry scene, she hopes she will have the opportunity to publish and perform her work in the future.


 

Caustics

 

Where did you find her?
For a moment I felt rare. Diamond in the rough.
Enchanting,
A golden tree root protruding from the earth,
Bodying a phloem of sapphire drunk on liquid silver
Melted by rhythm.
Somehow I was noticed
In the depths of this dark harpsichord echo chamber
Where minds met lines
met tongues
met hearts.
All feet were paddling together in a concrete pool,
Observing lost lines of poetry
Floating upon the surface of regis rugs.
Until this moment I had been drugged by my invisibility.
Addicted
To the security of being
nobody.
Vacant-body.
Just another space-taking body.
Where did she find me?
Ambling apathy at the base of a pearl coastline,
Shifting broken glass beneath her feet, their polychromic splinters scratching at her skin.
I owe my survival of these decades
To the art of submersion.
Refined drowning. Close enough to the surface to still be present
So no one notices how deep you are.
Close enough
To catch drowning sailors,
guide them back to shore,
but never let them take you.

I have found more certainty in catching caustics
Than sincere sentences.
There are no falsities in the kisses which seal envelopes of light.
Diamonds of fluorescent turquoise tattoo themselves upon my sunken skin;
I am made mystic.
My thighs, wrapped in a faux sailor’s silk,
Feel uncomfortably thick. Painfully closed.

No man would risk his life drowning for this.


Cinzia can be contacted via @Cinzia_DuBois on Twitter and C. A. DuBois on YouTube.