I feel you in this memory.
Vibrant like dust.
Speckled in the shining light you shimmered.
When the moon drew old.
And Saturn’s rings fell.
The ice age came upon my heart.
The powerful goodbye, the struggled smile.
Trapped now in my amber mind.
You’re a faded star, the core at my centre.
Which swirls around with love and lava.
Fallen empires and fallen stars.
Shooting across our fluttering souls.
Yet god’s volcanic change of heart.
Became our endless Pompeii.
Searched in this heart, I follow the straight line.
Directing back into the grey of time.
My memory now is hazy, but I arrive.
Twenty years late, like the light from the sun.
My mouth full of apologies, but finally.
Though fleeting and brilliant, a cosmic tear unleashed.
This air of history penetrates my memory.
Coughing up mea culpa for the first time.
I was once miles away from here, distant and cold.
Now I bury myself in your pain and sorrow.
Washing it over me like milky holy water.
Suffering inside of you, kissing away the pain.
My fingertips reach out and find your afflicted heart.
I pull it close and whisper, only for your soul to hear.
Je suis désolé de ce que j’ignorais.
Mais que je comprends maintenant parfaitement.
Quietly, lay me down.
Shutting out the light until the fears vibrate.
Onlookers shuffle, whispering like the clergy.
Greasy eyed and apathetic.
Coughing on incense and strings of my childhood.
God strokes me into calmness.
Tenderly, like a plant struggling to grow.
Needing the care.
I whisper grace and slit the throat.
Letting the eyes glimmer in the dying light.
The ghosts shudder at the demise.
Fluttering ethereal remembering eyes.
The air turns foul, and I gasp into life.
Sucking in sweet alpine air.
Death spirits away such needless past.
Life offers such beautiful future.
Words tiptoe across my skin like those across a gravestone.
They fade in your light.
And you blink away the past.
Taking my hand.
The Eyes are frayed, and turned skyward.
Mindful barricades broken.
What house is this, with no walls but only ceiling.
My wings feel clipped.
My heart aches.
Exhausted, yet still of service.
I feel the punch of every word.
That verbal violence that destroys my shadow.
Poisons my soul.
Let me retreat, let me slumber.
Up into that castle on the hill.
Back into youth and childhood.
Surrounded by solace and sanctuary.
And a mother’s love.
I burn down the present, as God licks her lips.
Waiting to bring the flood.
And with the coming disasters, I fuel this paranoia.
Knowing it was there already.
A box with a snake.
A razor in an apple.
A word rushed into saying, and never repeated.
As I thank this once exploited self, I patch the brick and mortar.
The skin, out from under.
And go on, living while the storm howls all around.
But never inside.
In moments akin to flying.
This heart stutters.
Wintery hands from time.
Pull inside to paralyse.
Were you there when the darkness covered?
Did you see the lights go out?
Shaking off these diamonds of memory.
They always cut my soul.
How is the smile that never waned.
Or the love that never ceased to flow, not remembered?
You pulled the dirt around us.
You placed the rose on the coldening skin.
Diamonds turn to rubies, and collect in the heart like weighted regrets.
Flushed with decades and red-letter days.
Wrapped in 80’s Christmas wrapping paper.
I hear you call, out of the gloom; out from under.
Was the light, ever ours to take?
Or only ours to give.
I see you in the mist, up ahead.
Smelling your perfume, opened that morn.
Drifting over like pockets of oxygen.
Following your footprints in the snow.
Calling out, above the sound of nothing.
Watching as the fairy lights that lead the way.
Each begin to fade.
Slowly these eyelids, heavy with snow, close.
And I return to the place that will never change.
Heartward leading, still proceeding.
Smiling in memory, encased in those lurid painted baubles.
God, suffocate me for another time.
Wait until it all turns black.
He wrote my number in his book.
Circled like I’m circling.
Suffering another day.
Wiping away new decay.
Then there’s a crack in the window.
A jar in the door.
Fresh pine air and the taste of Christmas.
Seven again, seven always.
Arrested in comfort under the Christmas lights.
Catching a smile of surprise and joy.
Hung on to a face that explodes in love.
That blanket of nostalgia covers me.
My mother’s hands, pulls it tight to keep the cold out.
But her hands are just as icy.
And the image starts to crack.
God, pulls me out and rips me apart.
Splinters the pieces of the past.
Until they float away on a warm ocean breeze.
Brought in by unseen atmospheric chaos.
And upper realm havoc.
The Drowning world glistens.
Trapped in tears.
It smears its salty view across my memory still.
But a year ago, humming as if only a day away.
The pillars of life crumbled.
I drowned a wicked death.
Wrapped in sympathy and synergetic sadness.
Cough once to stay alive.
Cough once more to live through.
I pulled the seaweed and the sorrow from my lungs.
But watched as you slipped into the deep.
Now the days have peeled away.
And the earth danced around the sun.
A ballet with solar steps and remembrance.
Reducing me now, here to this cosmic tear.
Keeping all that I remember, and all that I forgot.
Holding your ghost.
Like holding onto the sea in space.
The twitch of an eyelid.
I could hear it in your veins.
Powdered desperation to exonerate.
To manifest.
Disintegrate.
Lacquer up the wings to make the exit harder.
Push on towards the climb.
I hold your hand and whisper.
The only way out, is through.
Breathing stutters, shifts and surges.
Gaining momentum for ascending the gates of heaven.
Crashing through walls put in place by god.
Take the air in my lungs and strength in my blood.
The words that swirl in my stomach.
Burn them all for fuel, and escape.
Don’t look back and don’t forget us.
Shake off the coils of concern.
This is an expected state of hyperventilation.
Dislodged dyspnea.
A panic and a consequence to this sudden departure.
Rush.Fear.Dread.
A reduced state of being, seeing you leave.
Shivering into this new world.
Of a day broken over me like the sunshine egg yolk of realisation.
That an absence now fills this room.
A void as cold as winter, that settles into these bones.
Reborn into a version of such violence and void that my head aches into grey.
And my heart, slips away; into adjustment.
You folded us into memory.
A slight of hand that speaks with a voice of your reasoning.
Echoing now in my ears.
And my tears will turn to chalk.
While the plants die all around me.
A fate that flutters on my lips, like butterflies trapped in conservatories.
Glancing at the world around, but smashing again and again against the glass.
Yet still you toil and dig at the weeds of my entanglement.
That curled around you like a summer’s blanket.
And you sheer, and slice.
Digging hard at my roots.
Killing me a thousand times over.
Scratched, aged and wretched.
Praying I rot away and turn into time.
The snow had begun to fall early that evening. Though the sun had long since slumbered down, it was around six o’clock when the few flutters of winter dusting started to whip past his window. Daniel had left the curtains open like he did most evenings, watching the wild sky drip away beyond the horizon. It had rained lightly that day, and it took a while for the snow flurries to leave any impression on the ground. But as he watched from his small window, his face illuminated by the Christmas lights, he noticed as people came out of their houses to investigate the snow.
A few kids ran about under the streetlights, already bunching up snow into cold balls to throw at one another. It was a shame, Daniel thought to himself, that Christmas had passed already, and the snow had waited until after it had passed. Another bleak grey day that offered only the magic of the season, rather than from the endless possibilities of the weather.
He went to the kitchen and made himself a spiced tea. The smell of cinnamon and spices hung in the air, warm and inviting. He then went into the main room to where the Christmas tree was, sipping the tea which burnt his lip. He’d put it up alone this year, the first time the ceremony had ever been performed that way. He looked at the huge golden bell that sat a top of the tree; sparkling, like everything else did, in the strung Christmas lights that dotted the place. He couldn’t remember ever buying that bell, yet it appeared every year to top the tree they always had.
He sighed and placed his tea on the side, pulling one of the boxes towards him. He hated taking the tree down, or the Christmas decorations. As a child he’d always pleaded to his parents to keep them up longer. But they were bound by the laws of the season and the far away court, and all the decorations had to be down by the twelfth night. Why? No one could ever tell him, that was just how it was. Yet this was how things were now, every year it seems. Him, alone taking down the very things that were put up to enliven his life, if only for a few weeks.
He started to take off some of the ornaments, some of which he remembered putting on the tree even as a child. These must be so old he thought suddenly, vaguely aware of his own descent now into adulthood. His phone began to hum into life nearby, but he ignored it. He wasn’t in the mood to argue again, and that’s the only thing that phone was offering to him this evening. He placed some of the baubles carefully into their homes, snug in a box that would keep them safe for another year. He turned up the music he had playing, his new tradition; Christmas songs to ring out in the stripping of the tree. In a way, such a violating act. The trauma of the season.
He hummed along to some of the carols, there religious message washed away now he thought in the progression of the years. He felt old, and tired. Like his youth had slipped away without him even noticing it. He might as well be boxing up his memories instead of these decorations, freezing all he ever wanted and all he dreamed off in these magical days of Christmas. Spun up like candied sugar and placed away safely, to be removed once a year along with his heart.
He sat down on the rug; patches of glitter peppered the tufts still from the wrapping paper that had been destroyed last week. He closed his eyes as the choir music filled the room, taking him to a place in his memory. He watched as his younger self ran down the stairs, eager to see if Father Christmas had been. His parents, holding hands and smiling as they watched their children tear at the presents that had been carefully placed hours before beneath the silver Christmas tree. Though the tree was fake, over time it had faded and fallen apart, much like the marriage and the moments he now saw in his mind. The presents, along with this love within the family had been torn apart and forgotten about also. Thrust up each year like some special spectacle. Packed away when all were done.
His phone rang again, bringing him back. He opened his eyes and looked at his phone on the table, lighting up and convulsing in an epileptic dance. He ignored it again and went back to the tree to finish off. The lights were always the trickiest. It was easier with someone helping, and fun too he thought as he remembered how they had joked around putting the lights over one another, pretending they were trees themselves. The time when one of the fuses had gone and the whole house had been plunged into darkness, not before the sparks had succeeded in frightening them both.
Lights were always a pain to put away, but he resigned himself that it would be another year before he had to worry about them, and balled them into the old shoebox he kept, sealing the lid and the doom of the lights till next year. The rest of the decorations found their way into boxes relatively quickly, only a few things were placed around the small house as it was. He nearly forgot about the wreath on the door, only remembering it when he glanced outside to see how the snow was. It had come down pretty heavy now and he thought about going for a walk later when he was finished, to enjoy the winter landscape.
He finished his tea and snatched up his phone, looking at the missed calls. He sent a message quickly and then stood back looking at the barren tree, back now to its natural coat. They usually had a fake tree, but this year they had gone for the real thing. It stood now, just a hair smaller than him, shedding pine needles below itself like some defecating potted creature. He closed his eyes and could smell the aroma of the tree, the fading pine of a dying spirit. He wondered where it had grown, what bird or beast had called it home in the time it grew to its seasonal perfection. To be adorned and beheld for a few weeks only to then be thrown out with the other junk of the season, left to decompose in the street awaiting to be whisked away to somewhere out of sight. In that moment he saw the death and cruelty of Christmas. How things were cherished, only for the moment, then forgotten about and placed away. His phone nearby rung a reply, and he glanced at the preview from where he stood. A small tear appeared, and rolled down his cheek, the air leaving his lungs before a gasping inhale.
Daniel went to the French doors and cast them both ajar dramatically. The cold winter wind swept into the room, and some snowflakes fell onto his carpet. He snatched up the tree by the middle trunk and took it out into his garden. His bare feet sank deeply into snow that had settled already, but Daniel did not care. He went back inside and picked up matches that rested by the Christmas candles. He returned back to the garden and struck three matches at one time, letting the oxygen breathe life into the flame. He threw them onto the tree and lit some more. The snow whipped around both him and the tree, but eventually the flames took, and it began to burn. Flames licking the innards of the branches as he stood in the snow that numbed his feet. Drifting from his living room, ‘O Holy Night’ lifted into the air and encased them both in that moment. Frozen for that cold blink in the eye of Jesus, who watched on in seasonal despair.
Taken from ‘Impermanence of things‘
In my mind like candle flicker,
a memory burns low, yet still alive.
Holding on through the frost so bitter,
reminding us all how to survive.
A simple thought, easily mislabeled.
A memory covered by the snow of time.
But ignites the hope and good enabled..
That once was lost, will again be mine.
Havoc and Consequence 