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.