Waiting

You ask me to define myself, and I am tongue tied. You look to me with expectation and all I do is fiddle with my fingers. There is this loud silence that passes between us, and you chew on the words, mashing and squeezing them into a pulpy mass.

But I do not speak. I find it difficult to explain.

This is because the words I have make little, if no, sense. I start to speak them, and when they are about to leave my mouth they turn to chalk. And so I stop, falter and about turn.

I believe I have been hooked with an enormous upholstery needle, sinking in under my ribs and coming out again at the base of my throat. When my chest cavity opened I felt a flock of birds escaping. Now, right now, I am held by that hook – complete with the choked sensation cutting off my air – and I am above the ground, arched back against the shining piercing.

You sigh at me, infuriated by my silence. More hurt than confused. You look to me, and throw your words towards me onto the ground. We both look at them. You want me to pick them up.

But I cannot.

I am ensnared in this hook and line, I want to say. I am thirled, wrought through and wrested above the earth. I want to tell you of the cool thrust of the metal hook, wider than my wrist that sinks through my flesh and leaves it again. I stumble over my thoughts of the hook that exits my throat, and run my hands over the soft nook at the base. It is so tender there.

Without the words from me, you sit with your own in your hands. I see you looking at them, turning them over and wondering at their perceived lack of power. You are seeking their faults, looking for their dents and scratches.

I want to run my hands over yours to say that it is not the fault of your words, none at all.

The tug of the hook is real and fundamental. The sensation of tow and suck is overwhelming, pulling me forward in a direction that I did not plan. The elegant bend of this hooked needle has a cold glow. The pain is bitter, but gives me a gasp of understanding and reminder. I hang from this hook, suspended and released simultaneously.

I know I need to say these things. I can see your face waiting for the words to be said. My mouth is full of chalk.

There is the burst of a sigh escaping my parted lips. My breath blows cold.

Scanner art

Drowned girl

Weather

I was thinking of you today when I was staring out of the car window. The rain was dribbling at an angle down the glass, spinning away hypnotically and pulled by motion. Don’t you ever feel for the drops? They join, merge, split and flow on and down and away. They come together, argue, separate, and disappear.

When I focus on the slipping slide of tears, I can never make out the lights and the road. The red rear lights become a blur and the black fold of road melds.

With my eyes out of focus I know I’m travelling just out of reach of that shadow. It yawns in front of me, opaque and still, like a mouth. I can change gear and check my shoulder, like I did when you were last in the car. I see the shadow shuttle ahead with its open invitation. It’s moving in time with me, keeping pace and knowing my breath.

You always thought I was a little weird.

I wanted to tell you that I think that the shadow is made of anticipation. My anticipation. I can feel it. It keeps skidding out of my reach in the rain. I talked to you about this the last time. It is that sense I have. The sense that tells me that my life is one beat out of time, half a step behind, looking out of only one eye. The shadow is the feeling I get when I think the party is happening somewhere else, and I’m perturbed that I’ve been sent to the wrong address. I remember you cocking your eyebrow and you thought I didn’t notice.

So I stopped at the traffic lights, wondering at the shadow that slowed with me. People crossed through it, walking straight into it like it didn’t exist. The darkness washed over them like a cloud over the sun. They stood in my shadow of anticipation. Lucky people. They knew something I didn’t.

But it’s all a bit silly talking about the anticipation now, well, since you left. Now all I have is this cloud, the one you’d call regret.