bravery

your absence pulls like a sore tooth

crowding out the doings of the day
persistent disconcerting deafening silence


filling the edges of consciousness
the corners of the room
the gap on the sofa

an aching gap disproportionate to the size of you
who are no longer here


The mundane transformed by loss
into feats of overwhelming bravery

like taking toddler steps without a hand to hold

sleeping in a single bed
preparing a meal for one
making mince pies
shopping, signing cards
returning to an empty silent 'home'



the pain of remembering is better than the fear of forgetting


but we don't speak your name enough

dark luxuries

loss
sometimes demands to be recognised

wallowed bathed submerged in
indulged



Felt



A friend of a friend described it as the "dark luxury"



Here are some luxuries so dark and rich and beautiful and bitter that I need to share them.

It may be self-indulgent, but thats partly the point.

redemption

secretly
and in the silent sticky dark

spring prepares
waiting bated breathless

tiniest emergent growth
searing splitting seed

casting off
wriggling out

tentative roots
searching through cold compacted earth






silently
in the secret stifling dark

tendrils
curling

imperceptibly
fighting fingering up to sunshine

featherlight
unfurling

stretching awake
numb with anticipation





stifling

in the silently patient dark


something

or nothing









This emerged - to do with my life, my heart just now - but also after seeing the film of Ian McEwan's Atonement. So much .... feeling... to do with guilt and forgiveness, regret, remorse, loss, the need for hope, how to move from the past into the future... And winter approaches.

words

not so lost for words these days




pouring spewing out in jumbles
inspiration of desperation




I was not so wordy before

nor ever so deeply silent




and never so lost

widget

Some internal widget

automatic overflow
esoteric unsuspected
ticks away

internal
monitoring ups and downs
highs and low





is there a ratio?
some quota I don't understand?

that the process
- random beyond control -
must have some balance?



Is there a secret waterline?
normality functionality only bearable so long
an unused muscle
easily strained
reaches capacity, some predetermined scope

mettle fatigue gives way to overflow.




Is there a rule?
every twenty-first, thirteenth, eighth hour?
an optimum interval for respite and recovery?

there is no recovery
only absence




overflow trickles into awareness
pulsing
prickling at my eyelids

triggered by nothing at all
emotional cramp seizing out of nowhere




the widget
a trembling compass point
hair trigger fault line



grief like a thirst not to be met by salty tears
nor without



they come again.
simply because.


they're there.
they must be cried
and no one else can do it for me.

drips

the days drip by

at some distance

distances
distancing
doling out their separate continuities

pooling into patterns, welling up

strange familiar currents
ripples
depths and calms
dreamlike surreal



a drip at a time
wearing new grooves into resistant stone
eroding the ground under my feet
layering ugly limescale like a scar


what will i do?


feeble fickle attention snags briefly on some drifting interest

swirls and eddies
caught between extremes of drought and drowning
out of my depth


what do these drips and drabs of time have to do with me?

body

There wasn't nearly enough holding
kissing cuddling stroking

she became so fragile by the end
it felt as if she'd break if squeezed too tight


I washed her failing body more than once
almost unbearable
handle with care
cautious of crushing
painfully precious solid heavy distorted frangible flesh

clumsy as clay
precious as porcelain



It wasn't enough

there was a once
a moment
eternity of months ago
i kneeled and buried my face in her poor dear stomach

we wept
she stroked my hair
i can still feel her fingers

If only i could be back there still
not present in this here and now


she should be here to hold me

excision

it hurts me how readily the words come:

dad
dad's house
to see my father
dad will be here


my father


tidy the spare room
single sheets for a single bed
2 pillows
1 towel






i don't want it to be easy.



how is it possible so quickly to adapt?
to move from plural to singular?
we to me?
they to he?
a pair to alone?

suggesting at some level
(though I don't see where or how)
i know she's not returning


ellision excision
swift surgical
pain

the precision
of a moment

an extraction
completed, final, done.


now you see her
now you don't



My vocabulary has adapted
- healed -


but

i can't stop scratching at the scar

symptomatic

who could predict the symptoms?


not the theoretical expectable unsurprising numbness, anger, denial, pain
familiar presences old friends


- but who could predict loss of memory?
failure of concentration?
incidental distractable inattention ?


is memory is too painful, precious, precarious to be risked even on little things?
too busy cataloguing hoarding gloating

preoccupied with its irreplaceable nonrenewable resources

burying away for winter sustenance
lying in wait, preparing to halt my tracks with some long-forgotten newly precious treasure





why does the mind shy away from the routine, trivial, predictable?
childlike refusing responsibility?
wouldn't you think the small and everyday would be escape from the large and uncontainable?


and of course it is.

sometimes.

and then it isn't any more.

The mind feelings faculties shut down
an automatic trigger somewhere toggles offline
clicking imperceptibly intooutof place
simply blankly refusing to deal with the everyday
the banal
the trivial
the vital inescapable unassailable fact of it

evading past - future - moment





lethargy apathy
blank blank blank
how long will the day take to pass if i just sit here?





Panic
- now where does that come from?

unexpected unsettling
urgent desolation bewildered like a small small lost child

bereft of consoling horizons
facing the newly-strange without a compass
or a hand to hold
or a place to go





Emotions ambush
assailed on the sudden by tears painful distress
in the midst of the okay getting on keeping busy enjoying forgetting living life

suddenly the hole is there
and i am in it.¹





Sleep calls constantly
not recovery, recuperation, rejuvenation
but still respite recoil reclusion unravelling

refuge
resistance to reality
relinquishment


Except that there is then the waking
the return

which sometimes is fine.
Okay.
No, really.
Who could predict?


and then when it hits, the blow hits harder.

loss all over again



Who knows whats possible any more?
who could predict?











¹ a perfect phrase from paula, thankyou.

silence

we sat around her bed

talking laughing crying
listening in the silence to her complicated breathing

holding her hands
2 on each side

as if to tether her


and then she stopped
and there was silence


And now everything is different

rain

it rained the day you died

did you know?

teardrops on the glass
raindrops on our faces


i wanted to push your bed into the garden

cool refreshing gentle fall on your hot hot parched skin
sweet rain in your dry dry mouth

and then the sky cleared
and the sun set

she

no more difficult steps

no more tortuous excursions to the window, the toilet, the door

no more strong determined fragile tired tired smiles

her life has shrunk to this room
this bed

absorbed now in the process of each breath
she is so preoccupied with the business of dying
she is too busy for living

she

the primary she
my beginning and ending

waiting

like a Belsen survivor
life stripped away to the bare bones

gaunt, yellow, stretched
the hollow people stumbling out into life
blinking in the light

You will not return from wherever it is that you are
not into this life, this world
your eyes sealed, unseeing

what do you see? wherever you are?
what do you hear?
what do you know?

do you know our voices?
whispering murmurings love and loss chit and chat trivial exchanges crisp packet rustlings rememberings hello-farewells laughter and tears tea-drinking planning silences

do you know us?

you will not survive and see the sun again
in this world


so very very far from being who you are

still yourself
precious fragile tenuous

but you are not retrievable

her slippers

have become heartbreaking

playground

up and down
round and about
rollercoaster speed lurching heart-in-the-mouth

reality the whooshing sensation
giddy speed

clarity reality sharp detail in the moment
time suspended

still silence of experience
muffling the blurry busy noise otherness out there

at a different pace
in another place

swings and roundabouts

backwards and forwards

up and down
back and round again

here we go

hang on

smile
scream


hard to relax when holding on for dear life

hard to smile

holding on to

dear
life

Haiku

sleep



The sound of her breathing

too intimate
to share

Nursery rhymes

Each peach pear plum
A few things about my mum.

Heavy-hearted, what to say?
will she live another day?

Little Mrs. Pepperpot, shrinking to doll size
Bitzer Maloney, all skinny and boney

except her dear hateful belly, humpty-dumpty like

Walking on knives smiling through the laceration
telling stories in the face of the dark

a sea of tears
all those lost mothers and motherless children
a needle of ice in the heart
the nightingale singing, bleeding into the rose

white to red

Sweetness and horror
Comfort and loss
Joy and pain
Growth
Life
Death
Redemption

the fairy stories helped us learn when we were little
and then we learn all over again


Like the Cheshire Cat
- there's not much left of her except her smile.

Where to stop? heavy hearted
How soon will we be parted?

pocket

her head is so small

like an old old person

or a child

i could put her in my pocket

and bring her home

heartbreak

the way she smiles at him 

could break and heal your heart

in a long instant

spirit and matter

How is the spirit connected 

to this gristly bloody network of sinew and bone? 

am I my body? 

i ask because it hurts so much, this ache in my chest 

How can longing be felt by tissue and muscle, flesh and blood? 

How does regret render the palate deaf dumb and blind to taste? 

the dull weight of misery pulls like a stone in the lungs and stomach 

grief constraining breath 

the body bears what we can't express

expresses what we can't bear

Laundry

(Dirty linen in public) 

 

Baggy saggy slack elastic. 

 

No give or bounce or spring left. 

 

All stretched out 

 

thin 

 

worn out with tension 

Grey with fatigue

and too much washing