A Bad Day

The clouds had rolled in, her brumous mind began to tremble
She allowed the fog to sweep low, to moisten her eyelashes
She heard the sirens sing in the distance, then fade
Until all that remained was background noise rain,
Like TV static that wouldn't switch off
This was a storm she could not stop.

She let the thunder clap and jeer.
Let the crowds laugh, let them watch with their raincoats
Transfixed by suffering that is not their own
Let them make light out of lightning
They will tell the world how they saw it
But they do not mention how
They did not feel it slash across their skin

Let them return home to their lifeboats
That they claimed, that they built, that they bought
That they will not admit that they need
Until all is lost
and they too, are at sea.

She stood alone, and let her barriers give way
Let her ankles lift and take her, somewhere else maybe
Underwater might be better than here
If she had to drown, she would drown in her own mind
In her own world, with the scars she chose herself.





I got out of bed.
The skies were still made of slate, today.
For reasons unknown, I turned on all the lights inside my house.

Strength: Revised

"I am strong, I can get through this." "You're the strongest person I know." "This will only make you stronger." "Just be strong, it will get better."

Lately I've been thinking a lot about being 'strong' and what it means to me. I've always considered myself a 'strong' person - I'm kind, and make a conscious effort to be. I equate kindness with strength, because I believe it is easier to find reasons to hate - to hate life, to hate people, to hate your circumstances. It is far harder to love, to be gentle and kind. But right now, kindness isn't really doing much to ease the loss and absence I am feeling, that I can't escape from.

So, okay, let's put kindness aside for now. What else do I have? Well, I'm pretty good at avoiding pain. I have built a life for myself away from most things that hurt - I live in a cosy affordable apartment in the countryside, so I don't have to suffer the pain of ever being financially crippled and not being able to cope. I simply avoid the stress of city living, the hustle and bustle of people pushing through the crowds on their way to some destiny, by sitting in the fields miles away from it all, toes stretched and earth under my feet. I'm pleasant to everyone I meet so I don't have to deal with the anxiety that they might not have enjoyed my company, that they might not like me. I listen to my own music instead of the radio, so I can control the mood I'm in when I run my errands for the day. I only take on jobs that I will really enjoy with clients who seem like really decent people, so I can minimize stress and avoid going to bed with a defeated heart and a sense of emptiness.

And this is all working for me, it has worked for me up until now. I created a climate in which I could breathe, I made time for the small pieces of glitter that you catch glinting within all the grey stone. I have walked the sadness out of my shoes many times, run with tears rolling down my cheeks until I couldn't deny the feeling of being alive any longer. I have savoured the taste of the camp fires in the air and I enjoyed every moment I had with you, with myself. I allowed time to pass without trying to hold onto it. I thought I was prepared for this, I thought this had made me strong.

But I sit here, and I remain.
The first time I looked in the mirror that day, I didn't see my reflection. I saw me without you, a person I never wanted to see.

I do not feel strong, I feel carried. Time takes me to the next day, and the next, and the next. I just remain here in my body, powerless to fight it.
If strong is an attitude, then yes, I have moments of strength. But my motivation most days is limited to lying with a white mind, in my white room, on my white sheets, motionless.
When I moved in two years ago, I chose that bedroom because when the evening spring sunlight shines into it, and the soft curtains catch the breeze from the open window, it feels like heaven. And I lie there, in my self created heaven, not feeling much at all.

So I ask myself, how can I avoid this? I usually have all the answers. I could travel to a room bursting with colour down a side street in Morocco, but I don't think this sadness is something I can unpack from my suitcase. I could swallow sweetness and use biology - lift up my wilting mind with dopamine, sugar, a fix. But I think I am too aware of my own bad habits to fool myself any more.
The idea of filling the hole you have left with another is sacrilegious to me, my teeth crumble at the thought. The idea of loving again seems inauthentic, and I am convinced any feelings for another down the line would be a result of loneliness and a need for human contact, because no one will ever compare to you. No, I've had my fill of love for this lifetime. It might not have been for long, but it was enough, a taste was enough.

So I am left with this. This is now my Great Journey, there is just my shadow left walking down our road.
And whilst I do not "feel strong", I do "feel". And though this pain I cannot avoid, I must find a way to work it through my fingers, to add water to it, to turn it into some softness. I must learn to dance with it, to listen to it, to stroke it's hair, to love it. I must learn.

To be continued.

Stage Left

The air thickens
in my lungs
I breathe in water,
under water
salty and seasoned
by some numbness.

I try to take hold of life and shake it
Instead words drop from sentences
like heavy leaves, dead from a branch
And I remain
The sky is blue and high
I feel it all, I see it all
I am free to leave, unlocked
You asked me to leave myself ajar

 But I do not move
I curl into myself
Wishing I was a dying leaf too
That I did not have to live in this humid
you-less place
more a place borne to choke
each breath out
Your absence rings in my ears

For now, I live in the hesitation before the choice
the word you search for on your tongue
but cannot place
that's my home
My hope lies in the leap days that will never happen
Maybe you are waiting there
On some star with some telescope
a thousand years before our births, waiting
to watch us meet again

You call, and temporarily I forget
this headache simply dissolves
Except for this deep bass note, reminder
that every second that passes is hurling me towards your grande exit
Stage left
And there is nothing I can do, but watch
with big eyes and a broken heart

Conclusion

So I've thought quite hard about it, and I've decided there is only one way to not let life eat you up with sorrow. Grief when death slips itself quietly underneath the door, the unspoken mourning when you realise you are never going to be this same person in this same place in your life ever again, when your fragile glass house of comfort and safety crumbles in an instant, like it was only built of sugar all along. The only way I can deal with this furious entropy speeding toward me, is to really notice when I am light, when I am happy, to sing as loudly as I can to the music, to smile as I kiss him, and to notice and be glad for these moments when I really do have it all. And then maybe, when sorrow comes and wraps it's long fingernails around me, perhaps there will be no life left in me for it to squeeze out - for I had soaked it all up, let it evaporate into the past as it should, nothing to yearn for, nothing left to be tainted, nothing that grief can take from me, nothing it can leave within me.

Traveller

I have these dreams of a nomad life, on a blowing road. Just me, my feet and some rusty trailer van. Cold nights adjourned with blankets, the chill of loneliness offset only by the warmth of solitude... Oh how these visions bloom inside my head, every time I let my racing mind pause for breath, a spring flower thought blooming out of the mundane frost. I can hear the music, I don't know where it's playing from, some soundtrack to it all - I invite the musicians into my home on wheels, I don't know their names or their stories. And yet they play them for me as though we are long lost friends, bonding over some camp fire, exchanging memories like currency. My cat travels with me, of course - a furry friend to curl up with, another soul to study, a release for my maternal instincts that will go undoubtedly buried.

I pause, and mourn quietly for the loss of the life I grew up supposed to have. My grandmother's hands in soapy water, her voice narrating a husband with hands to wash me, whilst my mind is drifting off into a barn alight with feet, somewhere. I know how to be still, but only when everything around me is in chaos. I know how to move with the wind, let my feet bleed raw, leave the pavement beneath me wanting more... but only when everything around me is stagnating. I do not feel up, nor down, not here, nor there. I remind myself that this - this is the beauty of being. The song changes, and now I am a ballet dancer with all the softness of rain - no, the reflections of rain on a car dashboard, I wouldn't exist without the streetlight... I am unwashed droplets on the windscreen, I look like a thousand stars when another car comes over the horizon. I am nothing without this music, this poetry, this world which taught me how to feel.

I turn onto my back and cover myself in the blankets, each which held lover after lover. Each who held me, broke me, soothed me, healed me, taught me how to heal myself. Taught me how to comfort myself, like a panicked child - to forgive myself, I murmur softly "I know why you thought those terrible things, I understand, I forgive you, I love you, I love you." I exhale my old hopes and dreams, a husband, a home - they had built up like a thick tar in my lungs, slowly choking me and forcing me to learn how to breathe in a different way. I inhale my freedom. I question my sanity. I laugh, because that is all you can do. I smile to myself, because I know so little about who I am - the only thing I know for sure, is that I Am A Traveller.

I Am A Traveller.
I travel at lightning speed through the galaxy, I travel year upon year around the sun.
I travel through the moments of my life, experiencing each day as though it had already been written - as though some omnipotent being has given me one last chance to live it all again - I hold each moment to my chest and let my heart fill with a buttery mixture of sweet joy and sweeter grief, and I cast it aside with the most gentle, soft ruthlessness I can muster as I travel to the next now, and the next, and the next...
I am a traveller. As I lie in my trailer on the side of the road, wrapped in the blankets of my past, all those people I never really knew, and I let them keep me warm. I'm on some hillside, some unknown place again in my mind. But all is home to a traveller. And I am a traveller.

As the song tails off into silence, I lay fixed in my solid bed, in my solid home on solid ground, wheel-less and stationary. I have lived here for nearly two years, and every day I have travelled. To memories I will never experience, to dreams that will never come to be, and yet exist just as beautifully as real life, if only I always allow myself to travel to them. I cannot bring myself to close that door of my soul, it is the only door I have ever known, one I built somewhere deep within myself. I feel it is a part of myself that cannot be given, or sold, or shown.

It seems there is so much talk of letting other people into ourselves, but never is it mentioned of how to let ourselves out.

Out of the Blue

Once, all within a second
I was hit with a flash of blue
Came the thud, the crack, the brace
I awaited my unity with cold metal
Just carbon spilling into carbon
Like long lost friends
Instead, the shattering glass
it rained over me like stars
I had never felt so soft
I felt the weight of the temporary bury itself in my side
The music had gone


I opened my eyes to all colours of life, mine to keep,
if only for a little while more.

And I decided,
a little while is enough.

Grey Days

I walk through pockets of emptiness,
Open fields of yellow grass, trampled
I am half asleep, half awake on some bluelit morning
I didn't know nothing could weigh so much
My shoulders ache
The days are just spaces to be filled
Eyes shut, eyes up
Time passes like time does, and I feel nothing
Music just sounds like notes and chords, a little tune
I feel nothing
My cog-like hands turn the wheel, I steer my life without thought
who knew existing could come so naturally
My mind is greater than my thoughts that fill it
I think about the implications of this as I drive
Pull up my car on some ordinary road
Take off my shoes, sleepwalker,
Life stalker
I walk in all directions
Trying to find a way out of my head