When I leave

In response to Stitch by Imtiaz Dharker

Dying. Maybe I’ll become a leaf and float to the ground, slowly dry out leaving fine lace detail behind, or I’ll decompose fast in a smouldering heap. Leaving. Out the door. Will I leave a draught behind, a furrow of air rushing through the slender place I once stood, create a passage for you to follow me? When I leave, will it feel time, be time? Time and timelessness. What is leaving? A journey, a process. When I’ve left, I’m not in a state of leftness, but a state of being somewhere else – is that true though in practice? I have left Northern Ireland over 32 years ago in the sense of not living there, but another part of me has not left, both anchored to the past, my childhood, and more deeply, in my liver perhaps or bowels even, to the landscape, the territory I knew and claimed as a child as home. Here in England I am, at times; moments of the present, to hold onto. Hard, grasping, clinging tight, fortifying myself against the ferocious wind tunnelling me back to Ireland. Under the Irish Sea – every night in my dreams perhaps I sneak back there unseen, refusing the daylight attempts to be where I am. I go back under cover of dark, groping my way along stone walls now worn smooth with hands of familiarity greeting, touching, soothing. The cold stone touch that thrills and warms me, with – with what? I am struggling to write here. Is it warm, really? Is it nostalgia? It is a burning truth, my desire to return. A subterranean life I live. Where will this tunnel take me precisely? To stretches of sandy beach, cove and dune; harbours of jigging boats? To silent mountain tops where I behold the sky in swathes of blue spread out to the glimmering distance. A meeting place. Where land and sky, dark and light, soul and spirit unite.

Where am I going? I don't want to leave my ship, bobbing up and down on the waves of everyday life. Leaving would mean starting again, climbing and climbing and searching again for a quiet spot where my mind can rest. Together or on my own, I am still by myself. This ship with thick walls doesn't let water in and doesn't let me out. No spillage. I feel. I can feel movement but what good is it to feel without ever participating?

When I leave, will you remember me the way I remember her? She did her job but she was never present. She didn't care enough. She lacked feeling.

But I care! I care! can you hear me shouting from up here? Can you even see me? What do you know about any of this? You don't know how it feels to be stuck up here, wanting to come down. I can't build bridges, I was never taught how to, and my heart bleeds and inside I am crying. I don't want to be this person who engages from far away, too distant to be touched, too scared to open doors. Because what if the door opens and there is nothing on the other side? What if this tiny ship is all I have and everything I am and will ever be?

Come. Come push the walls down. I can leave the prison. I just need to be shown how to believe in the person I can become.

But this should be enough. This should be nourishing and fulfilling, so why do I keep feeling empty? What I need does not exist.

I might find it when I leave.