Touch

In response to Waking this Morning, a poem by Muriel Rukeyser

Touch. Tactility. Wisdom. Sometimes I let my feet lead or my hands and I stand back and watch how they move, what they reach for, how they carve the air, where they settle, briefly exploring, touching and non-touching, approaching, hovering at the point of almost contact, the thrill of anticipation, the thirst palpable, eager, greedy, for the contact to come. Sometimes I linger, press my weight against, into, deeply, extend myself into the earth, the body, the felt material of you, warm, breathing. I let my hands, the rise and fall of your body, guide me. Touching your rhythm, exchanging – what? – pulse, breath, skin, beyond. I am stuck now – not wanting to go beyond. If I don’t have words to describe it, is there nothing there? Ineffable-ness. Why do I write that rather than ineffability. A substance of ineffableness. Still stuck. Ok stuck, here. Let’s hang out here longer, touch on what is here. No gliding through this moment. Find the hum, the beat, the throb here. Where is my passion, my violent desire to rend this stuckness in two, and peer into the daylight out the other side. Full faced. Laughing. Where is the wild good in me, the feral exploration of each day anew, not taken for granted. Seeped in the light of appreciation, not jaded, not corroded by – by what? Despair, cynicism, avoidance, fear? Wasting time, these valuable days, or doing valuable unseen work – are there signs of the visible invisible? The weight of days which feel unlived, where I cannot rise, surface, gasp broad-lunged the alive rousing air. Where I am submerged, held under by the weight of hands that seek to push, push down, hold under, drown. Hands that seek power in the undoing of life, of impulse, of inspiration. Hands that seek to drown out my laughter; hands that seek to choke out the delicious air. Hands – they go both ways. Towards and away from. To life, to death. Your hands around my neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. That’s not the right word for an act of violence is it? You squeeze washing up liquid bottles. Yet you did squeeze – at first it was an abrupt choke, then an ever increasing squeeze, laughing.

Touch. Touching. You. Never again. Did I ever touch you? Reach you? The deepest corner of your soul? It never felt like that. There were glimpses, but I will never be sure if it was just me, desperately wanting to see the real you, or you showing me a preview, opening a tiny window onto what you could have been.

Touch. You touched me twice. Once in a car park, where your arms were around me and you said you were sorry, and I said it didn't matter. You had promised gifts but brought nothing. Yet again, empty handed with just your absent body to give. "It doesn't matter," I said, because who needs THINGS when there's the promise of a better future, a better self, a new beginning.

The second time it was in my bedroom and time had run out of you. One too many lies, one too many disappointments, a high pile of selfish acts sucked up around you so high that nobody could see you anymore, remember what you looked like once. I wanted you to go. I needed you to disappear and yet something pulled me close, made me cry, made me worry about you, the broken man, penniless, friendless, silent. So I held you again, touched you with the arms you gave me and asked, "Where will you go?" I saw you smile in the dark, that pretend smile you gave me when you wanted to convince me of your strength, but strong you were not, you were weak and scared just like me and I saw it, and it broke my heart.

We once shared this memory. You, me and nobody else. Now it's just me writing about it, carrying it over the years like one of my tattoos, like a mole I can never remove.

I tried to erase you, but you will never disappear.