In the afterlife There is always something to do pick up the leaning umbrella before it hits the window, leaving a tell tale smudge clutter. Le désordre le bruit, le fatras, a manic for the mind seeking calm in Upton’s Jungle where only heat bakes rocks inedible cushions flattened by visitations, last nights vestige reminds […]
Immutabilité – Candice Louisa Daquin — FREE VERSE REVOLUTION
Before hard faced words and tightened bouquets of spite,
came silence
The child swirled in embryo, unscathed by adult cast of hate
Yet unknowing we inhabit cruelty, like a brand in darkness will
light no way but vengeance, reflecting shadows of lost conscience
against petroglyph walls
stories dissipated in forgetting what is true.
This child who once had temerity and self-worth clad about her, the vestige
of some right to exist, perhaps.
An instinct, as weeds will thrive in exhaust and skinny cats climb insurmountable
to glut on that thrashing impulse, called survival
words now scarred, like badly bandaged souls do not forget the echo
of a tender heart turned wicked, nor that merciless piercing
through skin thought impenetrable, to embrace hot metal
as if it did not catch our very soul on fire.
Once, we all wished for, love, pure and unfettered, blooming as night rose
carrying her scent against warm air, inhaling vetiver magic, aware then, of all things
our cache of hope, restless in the waves, we yield, undulate and count
moon peal across black water, spinning youth into gossamer
too fine to hold us securely.
Those burnt coals raked certain, beneath the old impulse to run
mindful of how we grow, the thirst for something real remains
tantalizingly distant
against the roar of white waves, crashing tirelessly to shore
reducing our ankles frigid with the climb, a vaunted capture
of sea — receding against open hands to places beyond
our feeble reach.
As it grows light, the footsteps of those who walked ahead
finding debris of promises washed to shore, frozen by their spent fuse
and silvery starlight echoing her distant mockery of possessing any
certainty
those, who for some reason remain here, despite themselves
hollow in the want for familiar arms to gather them up whole
pressed to a beating heart, the murmur of security bound in
crescent sky.
A reddening brings the dream, she swoops low and achingly,
casting silvered birds from their reverie
that we not succumb to our collective despair
finding the drawers and cupboards of truth ransacked and emptied
by unseen robber
and instead, wait by the edge, long in the rising sear of sun
blackening our backs with shadow
for the sound of her footfall, across the dunes, sunk in splendor.
Her journey long, she made it anyway, even in the worst heat
of midday, when insects burrow against the burn and her mouth
opened in an O for the drink of your love
a beacon on a jutting rock, watching seagulls mock the air
with white foamy lift
wanting only for you to need
in equaled measure.
Pause
take note
before wishing adieu
consider those rushing years
how they go
girls in wide skirts with brown elbows
flaring in pluming circles, colors of earth and sky
feet tripping over movement, making hexagons of their desire
look back … oh look back
those long years that lay like the junk drawer in your house
untouched by thought or query
ransack shelves you have long forgotten
a hair band from her, 2006 I think, the texture of caught wisps changed so much.
Every room carries the souls of every person who inhabited them
a ring made of silver paper, from the inside of a cigarette box as we sat
in a dark bar on the edge of town, knocking back whiskey and birch
playing footsie beneath sticky tables, with shoes off, bare toes searching
photos of people lost, people found, people who no longer exist lost in circles
the force of life remains inexplicable.
Times past, fast and hot like racing cars revving their engines as soon as dusk
settles like a woman’s gloves on the sorrowful face of the world
for years you rushed around, paying no heed to silent pieces of life you accumulated
halogen lamps stand like cupie dolls with radiant faces
stuffing them in boxes, tying with ribbons, preserving for what day?
There’s lavender from my grandmothers farm, her old best silver spoon, a dog
tag from my father’s first, the smell of grass and good doggie sweat still adheres
an old stone mill and my cousins would drink from tadpole ridden water
and I am the one who grew up to outlast, everyone.
All the people in this photo are gone, still they remain on unsettled periphery
what would they tell me? Get rid of her, she chokes you like
late wine that has corked, she takes and gives nothing back but ingratitude
it’s never enough, it will never be enough, you are not seeing clearly
and the memories of velvet as soft as snow haunt like miniature heart
attacks caught in disused webs.
in jars there are stars and in skies there are words, for everything existing here
is upside down
I write about you until my fingers bruise, I remember the little things
you long cast aside as of no use, like me, like us, like this, once and lost
your memory is a cruel sieve with no regard for history or effort
only the smelt of immediacy and present day full exposure
I have long been your past, just as we have
become junk in drawers, lost to further inspection
when words run dry and even letters stay unopened
your cough sweets, when you ran a high fever and I made soup
the times I took, the hours, the moments,
caught in nets in your mind, to be drowned even deeper
crabbing pots without capture, no dinner tonight you sustain
yourself on bitterness and temerity.
When i am gone, tied in forgetfulnesses bow, you will not recollect
the cards I hand made, how I stitched your favorite sweater
three times till the moths had their eventual dinner
when you were lonely, the words we spoke in the dark
those comforts that are lost in the past, never to be unearthed
I built a life time and you forgot the shopping list
and driving into the sun, lost your desire for remembering.
Here in this place, I keep the momentos of lost walks
the day you whispered to me, I was the one, how we
climbed and fell together, like gradual waterfall
here is the photo of us laughing
here is a snapshot of us ending
still there are always rubber bands and pins at the bottom of a drawer
to snap and prick you back, to caring about something other than yourself
where we lay beneath cherry blossom, because you said you always wanted
to eat sandwiches and drink wine beneath Spring trees
my hair growing below my waist, the pizza they gave us
when one was not enough, drinking coffee on tindered street
wishing we could still smoke, being well behaved, havoc resting
the copper light of that room, how it smelt of patchouli and wine
even as we left.
I still fit into those days
they fit me like old clothes made new with sentiment’s stitch
climbing from the silence of today into
a divining bell and sinking beneath perpetual hurt
till music swells and covers my consciousness with
buttered fingers
they slip into me as you dove
deep and never released
your breath, my swimmer, my underwater love.
I still see you there
telling me to trust, when I am walking on our ash
here the trees are taller than those we grew to
know and there are no cactus or flowers of the desert
to go with that favorite tune.
I climb California hills with Barney and he hands me
a piece of advice, a white flag
don’t look back, do what it takes
life is an arrow, cast it wide, cast it careful.
Pink is a damn sunrise slung over beautiful shoulders
running rest of the way home, past the old mental hospital
where secrets are wrapped in files never read, like mosquito nets in Alaska
I go back to my Canadian house and the closed feel of doors
watch snow fall and think of tattoos
over 30 and how time is like unconsciousness
you feel it in another part of you
searching for a way to unite the two.
Slow jazz playing on a malnutritioned needle
here the fair comes promptly in June
they all rush outdoors, so grateful for sun
I tell them, where I came from it never relented.
And I wonder, are you still there? Waiting for me
on the one day of rain? As we kissed goodbye
beneath lampposts, driving separately off, blind in downpour
each aware of time ticking further apart
long arms flung like an acrobat in green ocean
flips ever more easily, than we on land
shall inherit perhaps these fitful musings
of things left behind
unsaid
undone
withdrawn.
The fence between us
you hammered in
you uncoiled and made
tall and hard to
climb.
Acid-dye denim might be
bad-luck or I
simply too old for
bare legs and
shocking rinses
(who the hell buys Manic Panic Vampire Red
seeks to re-cultivate original sin
desperate in disjointed
camouflage & need to impress
someone who is not watching?)
However, the real
surprise lay in
realizing I could shed
as many tears as a teen
who would not blink
at acid-dye-denim
or remember
when high-waisted was
in fashion
the first time around
when heartbreak felt
much, much
more hopeful
even if red dye
be it 1999 or 2019
invariably ran
transforming
tears
pink
I’m sitting in a linoleum room with ghosts, specters and occasional stranger
a girl with long legs like a foal, is pulling elastic pink lines of gum from her full mouth
and snapping them back, loudly
I wonder if I have ever sat so evenly in a chair, if I ever had peach hair, light on my skin like that
it reminds me of my friend who competed in gymkhanas, we made up our own horses, hers was called Mars and mine, BeTwix and we ran
so fast our hearts thundered up her grandmother’s hill in the La Roque-Gageac
her legs were like those of a foal, even at eleven, the waiters watched her with wet lips
I think of The Object Of Beauty, how Liv Tyler gleamed, coming out of the oval swimming pool
What men must think when underage girls begin to fruit.
My ghosts routinely tell me, I am without worth, they remind me if I had anything worth having
my mother wouldn’t be absent
a life time of inadequacy, wouldn’t be my legacy
I disappoint myself, not just the ghosts, sometimes I think
I don’t belong in this American world, where women are proud to work sixty hour weeks and go the gym at 9pm
still feeling they haven’t worked hard enough.
I think I am forever running in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine, with my imaginary horse
watching a girl turn into a woman, aware of too much even then, and not enough
the specters mock my lack of confidence, whispering in my detached earlobe
nobody likes a wuss, confidence is the American calling card, haven’t you noticed?
Even silly people and indifferent people get somewhere, if they believe in their
silly people and indifferent selves. And brilliant people, who doubt, will fester
like a ring someone lost in a river, glitters too deeply for marbled birds to
pluck it out and restore to light.
I lost a ring once, you’d given it to me when we were 14 and I didn’t have coltish legs
or peach fuss on my skin, but rather, the strong bones of a kid who drank milk with her cereal and got a stomach ache
reading Asterix at the pine breakfast table, with her stuffed toys.
I can still hear the plastic clock and hum of the washing machine
a warm symphony of my childhood, as I delayed leaving for school
and the inevitable crush of humanity, I had long decided was not for me
in fact, my trajectory was so far from that world of push and pull
competition and attention, fan fare and nose-pick small talk
I inhabited the after school hours like an addict of one
rejoicing in the quiet and empty spaces where
my mind could roam and gallop
sometimes I would sit on the roof tops of outdoor storage buidings
eating my soggy paper bag of sweets, stuck together from being
crunched in my pocket, head stuck in a book about
beautiful places with kind people and fantastic things
wild roses growing like thoughts from arching cracks
in concrete, their soft heads and sharp thorns
not the decapitated baby bird, I buried beneath the acorn tree
its silvered blind eyes, swollen and bulging
wings pressed like cries of regret for having never spread
in flight
something horrifying in everywhere you looked
like the terror you feel when you realize you are truly alone.
That kitchen clock would change day and month
but never really the precision of its emptiness
I learned it is better, to rely upon fantasy and avoidance
than the pinch and grope of society.
Often, a stranger would ask
why are you playing outside so late?
I would run away into the eclipsing shadows
behind the corrugated iron fences that separated
the good neighborhood from the skeletons
those bombed, bleached, bones of former homes
where a kid of twenty years ago had lain
watching paper airplanes cycle
above their head, clutching something with glass eyes
and faux fur, as I still did
funny, to find some comfort in the inanimate manufacture
of nature
my toys looked at me in the darkness and spoke
words of love, I needed to consume
their salty fur held
the cups of my early disenchantment
when teachers commented on my red eyes
I said; hay-fever and they believed me
because I wore a dragon tail
this was surely an adjusted child
with avid imagination
cantering alongside her friend
with the honey colored hair and long bare arms
absorbing sun like a shining fruit
I knew then how different I was
how quiet pain, how loud silence
my mother always looked so beautiful in
floral dresses with her trim ankles and long neck
I, the stranger behind her
admiring and shameful in her artlessness.
it was among the lost in forest, I claimed my place
when first love failed, when promises became
paper envelopes containing no letter
dishing out school diner and homework
leaving my scuffed shoes at the door
I climb
into the ivy
away from the party
a reflection I see of myself
gathering stillness like a blanket
she is fetching her best smile
for the emptiness of years
staring into emulous clouds, watching
for signs and miracles and unspent words
the sound of others laughter
rinsing through tall green shadows
like echoes of
someone else’s life
A child whose concave chest was already filled with debris
had been told she contained no worth
that child grew up soon enough to an adult with
penchant for self-hatred and did not master, necessary ladders and confidence
she could observe herself holding back, broken pieces unformed and bad
not supporting a part of her who wished to climb
and believe those good things to try her hardest
she saw others with so much faith and belief
light footed reach their goals and she saw the disappointment in others eyes when her own
efforts were hardly made
she left really, no significant imprint
of course, because of this, she became a poet
and that poet, if you can call someone who simply writes
such a thing
I would argue, it takes more than writing poetry to be a poet but that is another story …
had become lost in her years of wandering, to the point where
looking in the mirror she did not see herself anymore, but a shadow
perhaps a wraith or something strange, replacing whom she’d seen
as a child when there were posibilities and futures worthy of reaching
these years later, she stares at the shapes in her face
the ancestry printed there like leopard skin
where her mother changes to her grandmother and her father
and back again
and in this face she sees the excuses and the weak blood
of people she knew and loved and she sees the strength and the fire
of which she has none, as if she caught a glimpse of who she could have favored
and then it was removed, blotted out in a great gush of time and immobility
a few years ago she had suffered under an illusion of being on the cusp of something, finally
after years of working toward it, many hours, lost in pursuit
for a time it helped her to believe she was about to reach this new dawn
until like all the other times, she’d hoped, it was revealed to be no more than potent delusion
and that feeling, when you take the canvas off the future and find
nothing there but the madness of bewitched fantasy
in the hands of one who has become old and wretched in her walk
and you turn around and nobody is there anymore
only the echoes of those who told you, turn away, choose a different path
she would have spoken to her mother and said; You were right …
all the hate you felt, all the bitterness and disappointment, you were right
I did not amount of anything and whilst love should not be based upon
such things, I can see why I held nothing for you, but a wish to remove
my existence from your timeline and walk alone without reminder
of someone you birthed, who gave you only regrets
if you think I do not understand and only feel anger, you are wrong
when you left, I only hated myself and this is how I have always been
hating myself for existing and the way I am
from the time I can recall, I did not fit or understand
it was as if I had only foolishness as my guide and could not
make the right decisions, I longed then to be loved and to take away
the pain I felt ever present in myself like a badly mixed cake
will not rise.
I dreamed then of finding somewhere to be, a place to belong
where being me would feel right and you didn’t lie when you said
I pretended to be anything but myself, in such savage, unrelenting self-hated
I’m sorry what came from you turned into me.
All this is true and now, when it’s all been stripped down
and I stood unable to see, losing my eyesight, losing my courage and my clamor
to a wasting disease that refuses to leave my side
I begged for loyalty and it came, curling itself
around my useless frame until I hardly knew where
I began and it left, in that savage garden
where roses did not bloom and birds did not sing
I flung the doors of the asylum open and asked
what do I learn from standing on this presipice?
where would you have me go? When I never belong
and my trudge through life thus far has been without sense
it has added to the waste I felt about it all, and a long history
of dreamers who end their dreaming in front of walls
staring at bricks thinking something should surely
transform
no, no we are who we are and though we may run and hide
change ourseles and pretend to be what we desired
the truth cannot be avoided, a price is always exorted
I lost those I loved most
I lost the belief I could be loved
the safety we take for granted as children
my invulnerability struck out and destroyed
I knew my own mortality as clear as day
the rent of owing for our lives, that fragile place
where in an instant, all is lost
I never returned from that shore
I am still there, staring at mellow, sinking sun
and my own diminishment
for now I know my end and the dimming of time
I see in this act, the way of things, finally
how easily we fall and cannot get up
the temper of illness refusing to move on
polluting what we once took for granted
and gone is the boon of youth and health
all we believed fervently in
the promises of others, to never leave our side
THEY LIED
now we are alone in that echoing dark place
count the broken vows, the ruined trust
it falls like toxic rain
reminding me of nothing and everything and emptiness
a weak part of me wishes to reach out and cry
don’t, please don’t
but I know the permanancy of fate
where I have led myself in circles, ever diminishing
it comes as no surprise, in a funny way
for all the hard work and the devotion
I was as blind, as I was unseeing
perhaps from the start, born inside out
where everything I felt too much and not enough
my memory fades along with my sight
the thunder in my heart feels like horses are breaking me beneath their hooves
again and again, with each returning gallop
that pain is the only thing, I know will stay
as it was then, in my little room with teddies and demons
where first I felt the fear and the unknown
creep toward me from the outskirts of safety
and this time, I hear my grandmothers voice
she tries to reassure me, all will be well but
she lied then, as she lies now
and all that stands outside is the darkness of coal and memories
and all who comes for me now are the shadows and enemies
for I have passed over to a wasteland of regret
even my words are turning to dust
even my sense has fled
I expect the last thought I will have
as I sink underground, feeling grit in my mouth
is the memory of your kiss and how
for just, that one moment, I believed
this was not my hollow passage
sometimes what you loved the most
is that which kills you cold
for the reflection of it is like a moon
in a dark place
taunting the prisoner
in her opulescence
oh how I hate to know
the lines and whorls of my life like a palm
stretching their futile trajectories like dying stars
wishing never to have been born
What is this place that one returns to?
for some, possible, easy even
to put aside a person, shelve them with other memories
like a box of postcards growing yellow
whilst I was always the girl who climbing on top of boxes
found the postcards and brought them down
splayed like restless tarot on my lap
try to fathom, walk back into time
absent people, love letters sent to
girlfriends now married, unrecognizable
childish handwriting, burst of emotion scored in yesterday’s colors
I have always liked stories and wanted
to read the secret histories of those
who would not share them with me
so your letters I had to put
in a green river one by one
for fear if they were not wet and destroyed
I’d read over and over til you came back to life
finding myself
running lonely highway to your home
knocking on your still familiar door expecting to see
your living breathing face, cheeks infused with color
smiling in that way only you did
when I stood before you.
…
When someone has died
they steal air from the room
leaving behind closed windows
rattling against wind and chill
you have to go in with heavy shoes
make noise, shake cold from your bones
open them wide until pure sunlight
blinds primal darkness
I recall
how your hair looked when
sun stroked it in streams of light
how unbroken perfection of your skin
resembled fruit, summer time and children
lolling about in gardens upsidedown, tongue out
though you were older, I always felt
protective in that way I imagine a parent may
reaching for their child, smelling joy and motion
of their life laid out ahead in patient sillouette
I have always been remote and stood away
from frilled crowd with hidden daggers
content to observe and only participate
in flung arms of dancing and those raw easy things
not requiring sustained inspection
it takes a lot for me to wish
to share myself with another
to open up those parts of me, I struggle to reconcile.
unceasing criticism can close off even the thirsty traveler desperate
to sit by warming fire and stoke shadows to divination.
…
With you, we were two unsupervised kids
sitting on the dusty floor of my attic
opening boxes of memories with fearless hands
we talked without fear, then as
day began to show her pink slip in sky
I’d take your slim arm and lead you
into my bed where
light enveloped our heads like halos and we tasted the rapture of undisturbed acceptance
see in the eyes of one born of me
part of you
our mingled DNA taking lilac wing
in the electricity of love making
I could smell you on me afterward
and loathe to bathe
stayed writing by the window
watching you cycle away
the strong muscles in your skinny legs peddling like
knock-kneed urchin
turning the corner
always leaving
the circumfrance of you behind
radiating on the road
like a mirage
and in my hair and on my body
a ghost or whisper of
someone absent and close
if I could have kept you safe
or stopped time
but the heart is a closing flower
once damaged she ushers her dancers
fold into velvet, trap the dream
we were strangers, then siblings
of sorrow and laughter
like night and day play
on the fringe of their fading
your dusky skin against my pale
never enough time
to say what I wanted to say
in language untranslatable
to mortal minds
we existed as pollen
carried on high wind will
strike new life into that which sleeps
drousy and given over to liquid day
and I have never returned to that place
without a throat full of pain
wanting to call your name
hear your return
the indent of your existence
anything but
silence
The bells of the church rung
He said it’s why he didn’t turn back
That and blossom in the thimbling trees so early
He believed in signs and symbols, so did I
Before I was grown and knew the torn things inside
He was the boy who learned on me
I gave what I could, but kept two things to myself
My secret was, I wanted a child
My sin was, letting him take you back
Standing fighting at the top of his marble stairwell
Smelling of his mother’s perfume and congealed cough sweets
I saw myself falling, pinwheel, before he cast me down
The imprint of his reedy hands, a daisy chain around pale throat
His child in my swelling belly, with eyes the color of regret
He said it was an accident, I felt his hate as I lost my balance
Jabbing me in the back with whisper and sharp intention
Get it out, get it out, get it out
He didn’t know the truth of us, my child and I
She wore silver bells around her neck
And in his mother’s sea blue bathroom of mirrors
I stood watching the rapture of your being, take me over
And in the night, your father tried to tear you gone
With his thrusts into me like a spear and a blunt knife
Still my child you held on
Staring through my eyes at me when we were alone
I could hear everyone’s comments before they spoke
If you have that man’s baby, you’ll be shunned
And alone was really alone. Still I thought
I am not a warrior, but I would fight for you, daughter
Quickening in me like a secret slipstream of language
I felt our connection, you were more than blood and sinew
I watched my burgeoning figure, as I removed my clothes
Thin and narrow, except where you were taking form
Stepping into the bathwater, I felt something cry and give way
And the bath became blood
Hot water on, with the door closed and locked
Your father saw water running on the tiles in the hall
All pink and gorgeous
He broke the door down and saw me sleeping in gore
All pink and gorgeous
In the hospital they whispered words of relief
She’s so young, so petite, it was a mercy and a blessing
Any more blood and she wouldn’t have made it
They didn’t see your father’s fingerprints or where
He cut you out with the slow deliberation of an absent butcher
The whoosh and hiss of hospital machinery
The soft whisper of pretty nurses shoes sliding on lino
Your father watching over me, the violence still marked on his face
When we got home, the taxi driver said; take care you goofy kids
Your father dosed me with pain killers and turned his raging back
I saw the emploring milk leaching from my breasts for you to drink
And it was red
I felt the sting of your vanishing scraped dead from myself
My stomach still swelled with your ghostly outline
Your father moved in his wrath lain sleep and mounted me
I said; I’m hurt, it’s too soon, oh God!
But God refuses sinners and pearls
You were gone so you could not speak too
And your father dove into places raw, stitched and mourning
With his eyes closed he imagined nothing and saw nothing
With his fists closed he rose above me in darkness like a wraith
Not touching the spilt evidence of you
Not realizing he was slick with blood and tears bound in a girl
Till morning when he washed you off and with it, me
As I lay in the stained bed with my nightdress hitched around my wrung neck
Feeling the milk in my breasts, the wetness of your ever spending
Feeling the tether from you to me and back again neverending
Your father went on to conquer worlds with a rod
A rich man with the same long fingernails and sharp soul
He calls me once in a while
Tells me I’m still beautiful
And if I saw him, he would bring harm
So I keep us safe and I see no one
As we sit on the balcony and I imagine
You’d be tall and you’d be beautiful like climbing honeysuckle
Because you are my daughter
We raise our glasses to your December birthday and 27 years
And your father he cannot attend our moments together
He may hurt us again, he may seek to take you away
He stays in his apartment in the city and grows richer
On weekends he chooses whores that look like I did
When I was just a young girl
With hair down to my bottom and no breasts to speak of
He had me before I ever menstrated so we thought
You could not exist
It was true, you did not
Home from the hospital with a pad of loss between my legs
But that was a fall I can still feel in my displaced bones
Seeing the future with each tumble, seeing his fists open and close
Alone now and you have been dead 28 years almost
And I light a candle
For what I was not meant to have
Though I would have loved you so
And I do
You speak to me when I sit by myself and the night is quiet
You tell me not to be lonely though it is impossible
I smile at you because that’s what mothers do
Spare their children
Any pain
They said, keep the blinds drawn, what we have to say, isn’t good
they lay her down on a white sheet and beneath, the hammered metal hummed
the bulb in the middle of the room, behind linoleum, sung a hissing song
their white-coated pluck and scratch, indifferent and sterile, she was just, flesh and blood
another in a long line of patients who, largely were forgotten, consumed by a machine, uncaring of individual
she could feel the dried corners of her eyes crack, as she looked left and right
someone once told her, adult survivors of abuse, find it hard to relax
they are always looking for what is crawling out of cupboards
she didn’t want her past to run her future, but now it seemed, her future was in doubt
never before had she felt so alone
the petty bravery of moving countries, seemed a facile thing, for children who didn’t yet know, true terror
surely it is easy to be brave when you have no war, and are just posting letters
she lived like that for so long, running from childhood’s sadness, enjoying the wide open space of adulthood
thinking she had all the time in the world, surely growing older was for another life
it wasn’t entirely selfish, she did her part, but there was always the tendency to want to make up for the past, by living without a care
and then it was no longer that way
impossible to ignore, unable to let go of, she was swiftly consumed and irrevocably changed
even if tomorrow the cloud lifted, she would never walk as lightly as she used to
the power of naivety, ignorance is surely, our dearest friend
now her heart beat fast all the time, unable to still, the surge of emotions inside
she was a rabbit in her burrow, smelling fox
she was no longer the quick silver of a girl, without terrible knowledge
days were unbearably long, and serious, like the frown on an old man’s face
they spoke of compromise, a series of steps, faltering and bursting apart and trying over
it was as if all of her was removed and pummelled into earth and made to rise again
never was it more silent, never did she wish for the phone to ring and something to let her out of the nasty trap with jagged mouth
words are just words, she could have said; I am strong, I am going to fight, but in the next breath she may
simply not be able
and that lack of, that inability, like a prison, or a sudden dismemberment, was, a kind of horror she’d never been creative enough to imagine
like being stolen from yourself, and hearing in the distance, the sound of children dancing
to your favorite song
if life is indeed a battle, she thought, this is where I need to buckle down
put aside my tendency to want to climb out of the window and skip the lesson
stifle the longing to run fast, in the opposite direction
everything so far, had brought her to this point, it wasn’t what she’d imagined
instead, she’d hoped by now, she’d have found her groove, begun as humans tend, to build her fortress
it wasn’t time yet, it wasn’t nearly time yet
and all the days she’d squandered, thinking there would be more
all the long drawn out machinations, to position herself and be ‘responsible’
denying the lustre of living
she’d put off joy so many times, in favor of ‘sensible choices’
where were those now? She berated herself for not having taken
more vacation, more experiences, that glass of wine, danced on that table top
she worked for a future, she may never get to experience, sure she felt bitter, angry at her lack of insight
though most believe, we’re never ready for bad news or, the fall of favor
we think we predict worst case scenario but that’s only an anxious mind
seeking to control the uncontrollable and unknown
nothing prepares you for a premature curtain fall
nothing shores you up to deal with catastrophe
we muddle through or we give up
those are the only two ways we journey
when the wet-ass hour comes tolling
she felt a grief for her bad choices and wished, like others she could have no regrets
it is hard not to regret when you’re cut off from everything
difficult to look forward when the present is biting at your ankles
she wasn’t one to pray for herself
but she did now
she prayed for the strength she felt she didn’t have
she prayed not to feel so isolated
cried thinking of how many before her, went through this darkness alone, their hearts aching to be cared for
she was a little girl again, looking for her mother beneath furniture
seeing her in album covers and from the top of buses
that woman had her mother’s eyes, large and dark
that lady’s figure is slim and reedy like her mother’s was
at night she wanted to feel the way she imagined a child does
put to bed and told, everything is well, you are safe
if she’d had children, she’d be saying it to them now
but life threw her a curve-ball and she ended up reproducing only
empty rooms collecting dust
perhaps it was for the best, now that she’d sunk so low
for how could she care for anyone, when she could not for herself?
if everything has a reason, she wasn’t sure of this
to teach her gratitude? To punish her for lassitude?
if there was a God she hoped, somehow to end her suffering, even by means of eternal sleep
but she felt bad for praying when so many, suffered far worse than her, and how they coped, she did not know
only that she had to try each day to keep going, in what direction was unclear
she wasn’t sure of the sign-posts or meaning, it was too easy to let fear, guide her way
so many things needed to change and yet, she was tired, so tired of fighting and being scared
they say those brought up unkindly, learn to be strong
she didn’t feel strong at all, she felt like only a thin wind, kept her from collapsing
and all her plans were thrown in water, watching the ink bleed out, with nothing left to find, but papier-mache
her grandmother once told her, out of nothing you can build, entire universes
she tried now to imagine a place, where she would be restored
where all the things she still had to do, remained possible
surely you can tell when, the end of the record is over and, it’s about to go quiet
she hadn’t been able to, she’d one day been carrying her dancing shoes, across the newly waxed floor, her eyes feverish with anticipation
and the next, swallowed by sickness, left without curative
only the static of a cold room and a script for patience
she’d been spat out of the system, left to flounder by road-side
how different, she thought, from childhood where, we do everything to protect them from fear
sewing toys that will keep them company at night
mobiles to send them to sleep, songs to ward away nightmares
and at some eventual point, we decide they’re ready for the real world
full of savagery and disregard and people who are supposed to help
but are only doing the bare minimum
is it any wonder we flounder, and miss a step?
looking around in wide-eyed fear
mouthing the unasked question
is this what it feels like, to be real?
TheFeatheredSleep 