Messages

(in response to Home Thoughts, a poem by Jaime McKendrick)

Messages. Writing. Invisible writing. Wax. Urine, urine. Pronunciations . Censorship. Messages about acceptability and belonging. Short clipped sentences. Afraid to get into any flow. Afraid of what lies beneath today, of what I am feeling. Sadness? Sort of. Something I can’t put my finger on, can’t put into words yet. Not regret. Loss? Some loss, yes. But that’s not it, is it? Is it, is the sense of loss disorientating me? Am I trying to hold on tight to the intimacy, the journey; to believe there is still a togetherness? There is though in the memory of what we shared. The journey we went on together, not knowing where it was headed other than into lots of unknown. One day at a time. One meeting, one conversation, one hand warming cup of tea at a time. One step. Reaching. Forward. Writing, writing, writing, lead me on, past the stumbles and distractions. Lead me on to a place of orientation, a place of being firm footed, steady, sure. Not unsettled, by death, by change, by loss. But that is a fantasy, in a way. There can be firmness, sureness and yet always change. Standing firmly amidst the winds, the gale. Knocking off my feet, or trying to, chasing around my ankles, to see what sway I hold. Stand firm and yield like the tree – the old walnut tree in my garden. It had such a huge presence for the whole 5 years I lived there – every day out the window she stood, expansive and comforting. Yet never bore any fruit. Apparently she was dead; Tom told me I think near the end of our time together. She never looked dead. To me she seemed so alive, filling up all the space. Dying perhaps, slowly, but not dead. Dead or alive, or dying, she was there in my life. And she touched me, meant a lot to me. Like Tony did. In a quiet, gentle, positive way. Strength and fragility. In us both. He let me care about him, care for him, be with him. And for that I am grateful. To have been trusted, to have been let in.

A pile of messages on a new bookshelf. Messages to myself, because no one is ever going to read them. Some of them faded, some perfectly folded, bound by time, in time, a perfect parcel from a bygone time, when words were written with meaning, written to make sense of yourself, of life. Gravity. The gravity of responsibility. Too you young to take it all on. Your shoulders too weak. You buckled a few times, but you're here now, with me, within me, inside a little pocket of my being. Messages written and never sent, meant for someone who couldn't hear, couldn't read, unwilling to see. Messages from beyond the grave, dreams she often has, scrambling to find the meaning of life in the subconscious images of sleep. I sometimes look back now, over my shoulder, trying to find hidden messages in gestures you offered. But time is cruel and I forget details, face movements, the way your hands were folded. So the meaning becomes distorted and I find what I want to find, not what you were truly offering. I forget. I forget myself, I forget you. Shift and morph the millions of messages into new meaning, a better meaning, a meaning that suits the current narrative, my mood, my spirit. This is what time is: nothing but a distortion of memory and features. A constant shifting.

So maybe that's what the pile of messages on the bookshelf are for... To remind me about who I really was.