Hearing what?

In response to Scilla by Louise Gluck

Hearing what? What you want to hear? What you need to hear? What do I want to hear, or need to hear? Hear, hear! House of Commons. I went there once, sat in the gallery and I was appalled, waves of revulsion washing over me, sullying me with their touch. But we are all common. Do I recoil from the common in me, so desperately trying to find what’s unique, what’s special about me, that I up-end what unifies – violently trample with the cackle of the mad woman descended from the attic, running rampage of the tender carpeting flowers. The flowers, the moss. Soft. Appealing. I slip off my shoes. Barefoot. I touch you. You touch me. We meet. I soften myself. I hold my own weight. I do not crush you. Contact. Impressing each other with who we are, in the gentlest of ways, not waves rolling over us, but the slenderest of streams finding an opening and seeping, pooling deep within. I hear you now, inside me. I wrote “know” not “now”. And so I go there. I hear you know, you know what I seek, what I need to hear, to feel. I hear the soothing sound, the dance of water – woman. Slow and sensual. You pool in me and meet me there in my watery depths. Underground – the caves. The fearlessness of pothol(d?!)ers required to go that far beyond the light. To trust it’s worth the journey and I’ll find my way out again, or a way through, through to a different light. Light that breathes and pools in me as the stream. Flooded with light. Weightless. Effortless. I flow as the stream. I unite (write?) as the wave.

Whistle! Booing! What did you just say? I don't understand your accent. Can you repeat that? Boom boom boom! No, it doesn't make sense. Boom boom boom! That's my heart. Is this how I am going to die? Of embarrassment, unable to get the words out. It all makes perfect sense inside my head, coherent, knowledgeable then I have to hear myself speak and nothing makes sense anymore. Why is it so hard to express a thought? A few words, a simple sentence?

Did you hear about the new family?

The father drinks.

The mother is depressed.

I think the girls are prostitutes.

Never trust anyone who doesn't mix with the community.

What community, you idiots? You call this a community? I tell you what this is: a square surrounded by floors upon floors of curtain-twitchers, judgemental fuckups who have got nothing better to do but spy and gossip and make up stories. I hear them from my window, over the bells of the church tower, badmouthing this person and that person, a teacher, the postman, the old guy sitting outside the square's bar, stirring and stirring sugar into that tiny little espresso cup. Watching, all the time watching and judging: skirt's too short, cheap haircut, loveless marriage, troubled son, loser, wealthy, can't read, jobless. Hear this: I don't care. I don't care what you think, I don't care if you live or die or if you catch fire overnight, the whole bloody town. I don't care because I'm leaving. That's right. You won't find me wasting my life talking shit with the butcher, or the newsagent. I'm out. Off. You'll never see me again.. Tell all the stories you want about me, my family, my past. Tell them to your neighbours, your wives, your husbands, your children and your grandchildren. I won't be here to hear it.