Broken pieces

most of the time the threads are invisible
a family in name not appearance
individuals held together by blood
nothing more
nothing less

then there are days like this
when everything falls apart
when we individually disintegrate
and reform as one, whole
made of broken pieces

but whole
nothing more
nothing less

Peter

Tap. Full-stop. Save. Run up the wooden steps two at a time, finished Hamlet essay flapping in hand. Eyes turn as I reach the top. She walks over. Hand on shoulder.

"The school rung, it, it's Peter.."

Legs buckle. Limbs tumble into a liquid mess on the polished boards.

"NO."
"No, no, no."

Head shakes. Fingers feel for ears, stuffing flesh in the gaps. I can't hear the words but her mouth is moving. Slow motion. Slow spinning. The silent words attack me. Penetrate my mind. My reality.

His promise burns hot. Stings my eyes. Liar. Bastard. How could you. How dare you. You promised. Said you wouldn't. Said I'd never forgive myself. How could you. Two weeks ago, in my arms, you promised. Liar. Bastard. How could you.

She picks me up. Eyes burning. Heart bleeding on the polished boards. Tells me to shower. Get dressed. Get ready for school.

Tumbling down the stairs. Water scalding numb skin, mixing with salty tears dripping into mouth. Towel. Underwear. Shirt. Skirt. Shoes.

She brushes my knotted hair. Yanks with a mothers kindness. She is hurting but she doesn't show it. I hate her for it.

Black lines. Soft shaking. Car moving. Stopping. Door opening.

The common green blindingly bright in the summer sun. Sad shadows loiter in the shade of the buildings. She walks toward me. Eyes mirror mine with crimson colours. The bell sounds out across the school as I collapse into her shoulder.

And she whispers. Between sobs, she whispers.

"It's not your fault."

And I will know she is right. And he was wrong.

Not right then. But eventually. One day.

Wednesday

Strawberry icecream dripped pink and cream dots on the grass as she taught him how to to use his tongue to push it to the tip of the cone, sweet and crunchy to the very end. And below the sun-baking grassy cliffs at the most eastern tip of the lonely country they could hear the whales breathing.

Monday

I can't understand where it creeps in from. Absent one minute and suffocating the next. Blink for a second and all of a sudden the air feels heavier on my arms and my stomach registers a freefalling motion and in reaction lurches into my throat, my mouth, my eyes and my mind. And there it stays, for as long as it sees fit, an unwanted guest that does not take the hosts subtle hints to clear out. No. It stays for as long as it wants. Consuming all that is good, creating a by-product of numbness and despondancy. Diseasing my eyes and ears, polluting my mind and poisoning my tongue with apathy. And yet my mind battles with itself, the solid voice of reason telling the irrational scream of emotion that nothing has changed, nothing is different. When he asks me what is wrong and I say nothing I know I am not lying because between last night and us the world did not catapult into despair and my nightmares did not come true. So I say nothing, nothing is wrong. But really, I know that is a lie. I am what is wrong.

No Regrets

I often wonder how it is I will die. Different scenarios of varying morbidity play to the same tune of inescapable mortality in a picture theatre reserved for the type of people that read the last page of a novel first. The way in which it will happen worries me little. I've seen the car wreck with contorted limbs pierced by claws of metal. Cancer's slow occupation of the body, eating, eating away, day by day by day. I've pictured the bullet of metal hurtling toward the blue as I put my head between my knees and 'brace, brace,brace'. And I've felt the swelling vessels in my head as blood congeals and clots where it shouldn't.

No, it is not so much the way I will die, but death's mutual exclusivity to living that scares me. I'd like to think I was one of those people that could look at the passenger next to them and yell above the terrified screams "no regrets". But I couldn't. I can't. I regret, that is me.

It is any wonder I am terrible flyer.


No Regrets
Edith Piaf

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
All the things
That went wrong
For at last I have learned to be strong

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
For the grief doesn't last
It is gone
I've forgotten the past

And the memories I had
I no longer desire
Both the good and the bad
I have flung in a fire
And I feel in my heart
That the seed has been sown
It is something quite new
It's like nothing I've known

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
All the things that went wrong
For at last I have learned to be strong

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
For the seed that is new
It's the love that is growing for you

Growing bones

For months she grew bones in her belly. Tiny fingers clenched and relaxed and miniature muscles kicked out little legs, pounding on the wall of flesh, announcing their presence. And outside, giant hands felt for signs of life. For flutters of hiccups. Ears pressed to stomach, skin stretched out over a mountain of life, listening for the morse code of the yet to be born.

And one day in the middle of a mild winters day the two dimensional black and white picture became a three dimensional baby. Crying, breathing, sucking, sleeping, living. A real life boy. A child. A human. A life to be lived. A life yet to know love, feel confusion or reel with pain. A life unjaded and untarnished with the dirt of living, with the marks of memory

Another

Eyes weep not with tears but tiredness. The day's toll of witnessing life passing by burning into corneas, making eyelids beg for rest. Another day of life without living. A day absent of wonder and barren of surprise. A day not even the small moments could bring joy. Just a day of breathing without taking a breath.




{ Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room
Living first in the silence after the viatcum}
- T.S. Eliot, Animula