Love loss, loveless. Here’s what’s wrong with you.
You’ll take up the mantle for a day
in a place you move through
as shades do in night-time blue
to press futile murk
approaching openings that blind you.
Opening your front door seems terrifying,
even though the person knocking at your door
is trying to say ‘let me into your life.’
I can’t stop hearing that crack.
Before you know it, the days will roll by and by
into day after daytime tv show passing hours
as much as apple blossom collapsing,
pink dresses tumbling off cliff-sides,
before you know it your time is charred out.
I walk out onto the railing
and stand high over the neighbourhood
listening to police sirens
over the grey and pale blue colours
I see sapphire fires shooting upwards,
I hear that song again.
You’ll come to know the Earth will turn in spite of your fears
and stops only when you feel motionless
or most afraid.
I had a reason to get out of bed
but that’s not all bad.
These noises you hear outside your door,
the sweat permeating inwards
and rotating your absent soul
when you’re faced with the concept of choice.
I keep doing whatever I’m doing because it means I’m getting closer
I get to the hospital and they tell me
to sit down and ask if I’m okay.
Allow me, allow you, allow this, allow the tide.
There’s a dripping sound
and I say I’m fine thank you.
You worry that one step outdoors might crack the surface
of your world which is as an ocean,
fragile over darkness.
I ask another nurse and she tells me to wait so I ask her again
and she tells me to stop being aggressive
and I say I’m not being aggressive I just want to know.
They say they’re doing everything they can
but I’m wondering how bad the wounds are
and I’m wondering what ‘everything’ means.
I count the minutes that pass because soon we can be like we were.
one/
two/
three/
Not all those noises you hear are bad
not all the people knocking on your door are here to collect bills.
It all comes down to waking up
feeling like someone’s poured concrete
and built a city on your head
like you’ve been born again
as if you are now with purpose
or have something to become.
It’s about getting ready because the night has ended,
the streetlights are off and it’s bright outside
like it always seemed to be in an imagined place
and you take a breath of the morning and count
one/
two/
three times you do your laces and clear away the plates
slide out covered in a nice coat and an old bag
out to have a go at doing something that seems worthwhile.
You can’t sleep, you don’t want to sleep
like you’re looking for something in the early hours.
one a.m.
two a.m.
three a.m.
So you open the door to abyssal sunshine,
take in breath that changes you
grabs the outside and hauls it into the caverns
of your chest lifting in rhythm
one/
two/
three/
Feel change happening
in worlds that have no grand story or arc
it just happens
in early morning light
in purity, light that looks back at you but says
nothing.
You take a minute because it all seems different,
whatever it is you were scared of
/one/
is either here
/two/
or it’s gone.
The swelling network of minds in temporary storage
of boxed-up hearts in front room windows,
all the small pebble thoughts in a wide sea
of the things to love and be loved by,
they creep up and you realise you’ve been standing
outside the house for half an hour because it’s beautiful.
The sun dead trees, dripping gutter
patchwork and orange rays.
all fuse for you frantically
to inhale and stand up and sail over
as happy thoughts tend to do
and everyone else does the same every morning,
waiting for the day to start up and over
because it’s all people like us feel we can do
to leave the past in its place as you start up and over
desperately clinging to the start of the day
ready to soar up and over.
I count those minutes because I know I won’t see it again.
Not this moment of this sky,
not this moment of breath
of change.
I count the seconds it takes to blanket me
because I don’t know when it’ll happen again.
I listen to lo-fi air
in an instrumental morning
marking the aftermath of puddles,
a gap in a storm so wide it lasts a lifetime
and it makes me think that this day of my existence
could be different from every other.
So don’t mind me while I count waves of infinite oceans
bodies of finite things,
the minutes and the seconds of the sea.
We count the seconds that start our day, the roots leading us to lives
we wish we could live.
We do it because when the counting stops,
for a moment apart,
we just breathe
/one/
/two/
/three/
and start again.
Red Rover Magazine 