Seaside

 

Salt spray engulfs the bay

All the sail boats in the oil painting try to blow away 

Cleanse it of chip trays and the ice cream man whose sense belongs here only, and only on a sun day 

The sail boats blow away, not drowning but waving 

Come cast my nets, lets bow to the sea Come cast my nets lets dip our toes in the sea, not drowning but waiting, point the prow to the sea 

Take a cone of cockles and muscles and a quarter of shrimp 

All the sail boats in the oil painting blow away rock away

And beyond, preserved like a secret, a relief of history, 

the city through an arch, not drowning but waving, brought back into now by cocktails at sunset

Salt rim, biters and lime Don't blow away 

Peer through the arch at the sea spray world, tumbled and polished by storms, swooped over by an agitation of salty seabirds

Give me guts, give me glory, blow away, blow away

There's money to spare in the mermaids purse to hear the sea dog spin a tale or a curse 

Its a fey pantry, a jumble of guts and worse, blow away 

All the sail boats in the oil painting blow away 

Vessels of the sea tied to the land, tied to the tide 

A world of cobblestone belonging and painting

Through the storm sky a quarter of shrimp hide under the rock 

A flagellation of seaweed of salt spray and fossil and cockles and trilobite jumble blow away 

Hidden 'neath seaweed, preserved like a secret

Dip your toes take a look

There I will fall and collect in the pool, tumbled and polished 

Not drowning, but waiting

Castaway, like an oil painting swallowed me whole, salted and sprayed to blow away.

The book of you.

Tattered and torn

Stopping the slide of time.

Hiding in plain sight

The story of our life

Written in a fading hand.

Worn smooth

Like a penitent's step

We knew the storm was coming.

Translate the past 

To brighten the future,

It's just the beginning.

Peering over earl grey or darjeeling,

Where else would we go?

My history and yours

Joined together and apart.

Drive, sit, drift, move on.

The untimeliness of death.

Memory's doors a locked casket.

Bruised

 It’s all I ever heard: redemption song. Like a stuck record but one that always lifted my spirits.

            The bruises are fading but the pain is still real and here he is in the shine of the spotlight calling me names. Not the ones he calls me when Jack Danniels comes to town: stupid, fat, ugly. Those have fallen into darkness along with the rest of the ugliness. Tonight he is repentant, attentive, apologetic.

            The dinner is cooked. Steamed broccoli and almonds with a fillet of seabream each, hollandaise on the side. The table is laid with my favourite china and crystal.

            He doesn’t say sorry, he lets his efforts speak for him. He is a child without sufficient vocabulary, holding out a present wishing to make amends. There is a part of me that wants to tell him to go. What is this? It’s not enough to make up for… even I stop short of speaking its name. 

            Should I show him the marks on my skin, the bruising on my arms? Seeing them will not help him feel the pain he caused me.

            ‘Kitten, there you are. I was worried about you. You’re back so late.’

            This is how it’s going to be then. We do not speak its name, the skeleton that comes out of the closet. To name it is to goad it. Keep silent, let the moment pass into history. Guide me, Oh, thou great redeemer, teach me forgiveness.

            Look how wonderful he can be. This is what he wants. How he sees himself. How I should try to see him. If I am better, more careful he will be able to keep the other self at bay. I must let him be this version of himself. 

            He comes towards me. I flinch.

            ‘Your coat, madam.’ He says it smoothly, brushes a kiss onto my cheek. I feel my body grow rigid and am suffused with guilt. Why am I reacting like this when he is being so kind? I suppress the quiet voice in my head that tells me: you know why.

            And then it happens. The moment that spins on a dime: heads or tails. The fate of the evening, our future, rests in this moment. I know this. It is a dance that has become more familiar of late.

            ‘That’s a nasty cut over your eye, Kitten. Stitches?’ 

            He tuts gently as if reprimanding a careless child, waits a beat.

            ‘How did that happen?’

            He is standing behind me. I can feel the heat of him, his physical presence. I stutter, feel my face flush. My voice is small, hesitant.

            ‘Oh, I… a cupboard in the kitchen at work. It was opened and I didn’t see.’

            ‘You really should be more careful, my love. You can be such a clutz.’

Standing Alone

        The lake lay like a heavy blue shadow below the shelter of the celadon hill in the hours before midnight. The sky was dusted with clouds of stars like paint splatters from a toothbrush. I felt there were angels watching over me with smiles upon their faces and I could not regret this night even if it stood alone in its uniqueness. 

        I had to phone someone so I picked you and you did not disappoint. Where I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon. You always had that gift of bringing me to laughter, bringing me home to myself, covering me with salt and kisses and firing me with a sense of belonging. 

        It had to end. All good things do. Now it was time to let the raven call you home. I called to your retreating form.

       ‘Don’t be a stranger!’

       And then, I was alone.

In the meadow - an extract

The grass beneath me is a velvet bed. Sky high flies buzz unseen. It seems the protection we hoped would be ours in this sanctuary has already turned bad. Telepathy, once a tool of transcendence, has become a silent assassin. My thoughts are not my own. The connection to others is not one I can control.

I close my eyes to the brilliance and concentrate my thoughts on the toll of the distant bell, adjusting my haunches, aligning myself to the sound. I can feel it reverberate, vibrating through the earth, the air, my skin. I am the bell and the bell is me; we are one. The rich sounds cocoon me; I am a butterfly in transition. Is this what I can be: pure and complex all at once?

My thoughts become muddled, a muted mayhem, a tortured tangle that jangles. The peace I felt just a moment before flown away like a bird. Closed eyes make you blind and yet I can see some things more clearly. There is a might of manipulation in their movement to maintain civility when the motivation is to control our next move.

I sit up, startled by the harsh ‘caw’ of a magpie and stare off into the trees. Evening will soon be here.

Bedlam

I have my own truth. I know it is not what others see. I can draw it out in thread in moments when the calm descends. My needs are simple: light, cloth, thread, crewel-needle, cruel. If the calm is allowed, the clean can come and I can tease the muddled thread into one simple stitch. In, out, poke, prick, pull. I feel the tug of words forming.

            I like it when everyone minds their business. The stillness comes and I am the thread picking out my truth in diabolic code: poke, prick, pull, poke, prick, pull. 

William is not an unkind man, just a lost man. A man lost in words of his own, with a sense different to my own. I sit: poke, prick, pull, poke, prick, pull. Maybe the understanding can be unravelled.

            I can’t remember the beginning, it is buried deep, but when I sit like this, poke, prick, pull, and see another letter and another it can begin to shine. There is some hint of understanding. I can smell it. I cannot see the beginning ,but I fear that it will not end so I keep poke, prick, pulling.

            The stillness comes less often now. My needs are simple, but my desires are complicated. No one has to mind their business. There is no one who cares. I can mind my own business now. Just give me the essentials: needle, thread, cloth. I want to see the line not the fish, the fish not the shoal. Help me clean. Help me remove all the specks of misunderstanding.

Strangely fine

He said I would have what I needed, the essentials, but I can’t find paper or my fountain pen, just silence and The Lord’s Prayer. Prayer over and over. I like The Lord’s Prayer. It is clean, cleaner, cleaning me. It is cleaning me so I can have kindness. You cannot have kindness unless you are clean. Or compassion it seems. Everything must be clean. I have to earn it in Lord’s Prayers. I am here to find kind by cleaning to be clean.

            Charity, with her baby feet, left me a smile. I see it sometimes echoed in the faces of the wardens: all mouth and no eyes.

            I didn’t have to come here but it was too noisy to find the words for anything else when William told me. He was always too noisy: all sound and no heart. No. That’s not right. He brought me a cockatiel once, in a cage. I touched its soft feathers. It was cushiony but then it squawked. Squawk, talk, hawk, gawp. Staring and spying and making my still fly. I banged my fists down, down, down on the cage and it flew, feather, flitter, shrill. Hands on ears, on ears. Shut up, shut out shut eyes. Eyes screw, rocking, blocking. Gone. Bird gone. I never saw it again. Never see kind William too. Gone with cockatiel feel. Seal sealed. Tight Shut.

            I’ve been cleaned by The Lord’s Prayer so many times, but I haven’t got my kindness. There is a cottage on the river behind a wall. I go there to be left alone. It is still. I can go when it is still. It is still and I can mind my own business, busyness. And everyone else can mind theirs. I have my tin of threads and I can write words I cannot say. Secret words in the darned threads of sailor socks. Nobody knows. Nobody would know. It’s on the sole hole. Whole soul hole. It is clean there when I clean it and I can be kind and people can be kind to me. But I can only go there when it is still with my fountain pen and paper when I draw the curtain and the window and when I remember that the moon controls the tide.

A loose thread

Ribbons and buttons and anonymous threads, thread, threaded. Deaded. I kept them safe in a tin, their own labarynth. They lie like a tangle of thoughts and episodes waiting to be unravelled, smelled, spelled, recognised. Sometimes they make more sense to me in there, out of harm’s way, shut up, unjudged by danger mouse and risky rat. Shut up. Shut UP. 

            But, butter. Butter in his nose on his whiskers on his paws. William would still slide into this conclusion: that we cannot be free to be you and me. There are too many spiders, not enough flies. He is the spider I am a fly. He has threaded me into safety, but I hold the silks. See here, in my tin. I hold them safe, Safer. Safety net, Safety Knot. Not only with words but with songs, French songs, lullaby goodbye lullaby from Lily loopy-limpet: Brother Jack Brother Jack are you asleep. William has taken control. He has made a safety net, safe for me, safe from me, a fishing net more hole than substance. It’s like the tight-rope walker on the tight, taught wire. A desire for height or flight or fall. Fall through the cracks in the pavement, through the diamonds in the net, through the scales. Fall, falling, fallen. Quite a stunt.

            Did the curtain twitch, the curtain to the other side? If I draw the curtain with paper and pencil I might see the cockateels again, the bright wing beat, the flitter butter of wing and air: beaten butter, creamed,created. Creating something new with pictures, with words. Out of harms way. 

            Not now. Now I need to keep it safe in a tin bin, safe from the whiskers and the wires.

            William

is talking. His words seem blurred. Talk to me not only with your words. They are not enough alone. I need the pace, the space between them.

In the beginning...

For her

It wasn’t an earth shattering moment when we first met. It held no hint of the drama or magnitude to come. It was just an ordinary day, an unimaginative, anonymous scene: a long corridor with pale green linoleum floors and a slightly darker shade of moss-coloured metal lockers along the walls punctured with gaps for doorways.

            I had opened my locker and all the books had tumbled out in a thump and flutter scattering papers to the floor. Then there he was, this man-boy with his wide unarmed smile. He picked up my fallen papers and started talking.

            ‘Glad that happened. I’ve been hoping to talk to you. Ive seen you in the library. I’m Paul.

            I took the sheets from him irritated by their disorder.

            ‘Bianca.’ I said.

            ‘I know.’

            He smiled and I felt flustered unaccustomed to the attention. I snapped.

            ‘Saying hello can’t be that challenging if you already know a persons name, surely. It’s a wander you took so long.’

            ‘Well I shan’t wait for an invitation next time. You’ll be seeing me.’

            He walked off, turning to check that I was watching him just before he ducked into the languages class.

            After that he was like the book you want to read but haven’t got hold of yet: you start seeing people read it everywhere you go, on busses; in cafes; its lying in someone’s school bag, being discussed on the radio. That’s how it was with Paul. Suddenly I was aware of him and he was everywhere I went.

            He was the first boy to show me any attention, but now that he had I wanted to make the most of it. I was determined to capitalise on his interest in me.

For him

Her folders slam to the floor. Her papers flutter towards me like an invitation. This is my chance. I can play the hero then she might be interested in me. Play it cool, I school myself.

            ‘Hello, I’m Paul.’

            Please smile in my direction I will her. I crave the jolt I know it will give me. She has become a drug to me, a secret high. Now is my chance to main-line. Her eyes meet mine. I don’t hear what she’s saying for the buzz in my ears. I feel the simultaneous softening and hardening of my body’s response. Stay cool.Act cool. How can I cover this up? How can I answer when I didn’t hear what she said? 

            ‘You’ll be seeing me.’ I try to saunter away. What the hell is a saunter?Not too fast. Is she watching? She must think I’m a creep.I can’t stop myself from glancing back as I turn the corner. Just a quick look.Yes! Score!