Tuesday 1 February 2022

The Memory Of A Companion

Movement lies in the cycles of every day, and in that movement is life. My life. 


The sun’s cycle is one, no less important for its ordinariness. I never seek it out, but I’m asleep when the sun is furthest away, tucked into my comfortable bed. I’m called to wake when the rays sweep beyond the heavy, white curtain that preserves my night, and glimmer against the glass door. There are other cycles, just as present. I’m called to eat, and I do. I’m urged into play, and I do. When the irrepressible energy of the day strikes me, I run and run and run, until I slump, panting. As the sounds of traffic pick up, I find my spot on the divan in the balcony, and I settle down to watch vehicles trundle to and fro. Back and forth. Everyday.


I’m urged too into love. You might think a beautiful thing like love would never be greyed into routine. But the cycles aren’t bad in themselves, because life, and pleasure, is woven into them. When they, my misshapen family touch me, stroke me, it ripples through my fur. When they take into their arms, raise me to heights my legs cannot take me, I am not afraid, because I trust, and trust is love. Their warm, familiar embrace wraps me like a cocoon. They make soothing gibberish sounds. I respond, I say I love you too. On another day, I might climb into their laps as they sit down. Or wrap myself around an overlarge leg, and sleep, breathing in their scent and warmth. It manifests in everchanging ways, but it’s in the cycles that love resides.

 

Sometimes, just sometimes, something genuinely new happens. There’s someone new. Great, big, tall, clumsy, smelly, but someone new and love-filled. His newness fills my space. Where I sometimes sat, and watched the birds fly along impossible paths, he sits, and makes nonsense sounds. But paradoxically, the more he occupies, the more my love grows. He’s a stranger! I should be afraid but I am not. I should shout and warn, but I gibber and cuddle. Perhaps it’s love so great, love so full, I can’t help give back.


The cycles of routine creep, and their loving caress transmutes the novel. When I hear his body shuffle, hanging on to dregs of sleep, I run full tilt to where he lies, and I jump and shout until he’s there where he’s not. When I hear his feet pad along to the kitchen, I feel the morning energy call to me, and where I ran, I now go to him, and ask him if he wants to play with me instead. He’s slow, and he lumbers, but he joins me. I weave in and out, from one side to the other, dodging him. When he’s slumped for hours in the chair,  and when the day’s at its lowest ebb, I seek him out, nudge him and say hello. He says something, but his posture is stiffer, his face crinkled, and I know he’s happy. What’s a new cycle but a cycle?


Then one day, it’s broken. I climb into my new favourite spot, where the sun has warmed the cushions just enough, and where he likes to sit, but he isn’t there. When the bed no longer creaks in promise of his waking, I go there anyway. My legs aren’t strong enough for me to jump, but I feel his presence, he must still be there right? I jump and shout, but he doesn’t appear. His scent lingers in the air, and I follow it into unfamiliar spots. I clamber over uncomfortably high boxes into strange rooms, cautious, alert, hopeful. The scent weaves in the air, tantalising, but never forming into him. The others are there. They’re clumsy, noisy and smelly too, and I love them, each in their own way. But they’re here, and he’s not. I’m busy searching, and they hold me up, lift me impossibly high. The warm, familiar embrace is still there, but the hugs are too long, and I wiggle, uncomfortable. Their words are softer, more soothing. I insist that I love them, but I have to go. They shush me, saying reassuring things I don’t understand. I brush it off as human fickleness. I run and run, and find another trail. This one is faint, and withered, suggestive of older, rarer patterns, but with my focus turned to it, sharpens into a path. I run to the sofa by the boxes where they - and he - keep the shoes they put on. I don’t come here often. Vague anxieties assail me here, and I think of cycles without my family. Now though, the scent of new love was here. It is no more alive than any other, but I’m tired, and it’s a welcoming place, and I curl up to rest. When I open my eyes, I see them watch me, and there are tears in their eyes.


The trails of promise fade, and the new, new routine becomes just a routine. I sleep by the boxes, and where the sun burns sharp, until I no longer do. An unformed thought hovers on the edge of my consciousness. This love, a love so great and surprising that took over my cycles for a period, it isn’t what I believed it to be. Deep in the deepest of my memories, so ravaged by the cycles of time that it bears only the crudest similarity to the now, he was there. It wasn’t an inexplicable connection with a stranger, but a rekindled one with a loved one from a memory. I can almost remember being held in his different, yet same, arms, ensconced in the same, yet different warmth. I can almost remember, but not quite.


I no longer look, and even the dead trails disappear, not just dead but forgotten. Until all that remains is a look in the eye, a quirky habit, and a promise. A promise of a future that will make the unfamiliar familiar again.

Wednesday 20 October 2021

Sharp, Bright

 


Fluttering thoughts Are sweeping whirlwinds

Mundane scenes become Leech-dark memories


The laugh of another Can but be ridicule


Every hurt stings Scorching injury


Sharp, bright feelings cut

but


But a common wildflower Sings like precious rose


The gentle touch of other Caresses endless courage


A palmful of love clasps An eternity of together-joy


Sharp, bright feelings cut

but


In between spacious atoms Colour becomes ultraviolet A blessed world awakens Sharp, bright, gilded grandeur Sharp, bright, intimate pain

Monday 11 October 2021

The Path

 

I soar above seeking a path Fingers gripping meshing cords

The infinite made finite

Far below, another’s pain burns

I tug a rope, and offer salve

The fire soothed, higher I soar

When new hurt calls, I respond

Again, and again, not to rise

But that the path is clear, and the sky is bright


Fickle luck brooks no calm

Electric arcs cut a strange, dark sky

The fire is lance-sharp, the pain now mine

Far above, another soars free

Their white, bright sky is a cocoon

My grey presses, presses heavy

The other sees, eyes hard and true

And turns away towards pleasure


The storm passes, and I continue

Only the wind steers mindless ropes

The path is plain but it is mine

Mine and mine alone

The call of another hurt grows

But each refusal softens the next

My path and mine alone

My heart soon begins to grow cold

Colder than the mindless wind and mesh

Squeezes tight until there is only darkness

The path is plain but I cannot see.


I reach out for a different rope

Pulling at new possibility

The call of another is a sum

Hero or villain, friend or foe

I heed only those whom I owe

Like the one now slumped in grey

A common grey face that adds up

The fire soothed, higher I soar

Not quite to heaven, not quite so high

But the heart is still for now.


Nervous time brooks no calm

Unheard pain adds to unwanted sums

The heart is gnawed and weary

I tug the forgotten first

Into the murk I sink, the salvebringer

But my heart is full and I soar again.


Crests and troughs bring clarity

That a steady path never showed

Truth lies in jarring motion

To seek the path is the path.

Saturday 11 January 2020

Failure


Does it hurt because of the fall?
  Does it hurt not knowing to stand?

Does it hurt because I'm too proud?
  Does it hurt because I'm not proud enough?

Does it hurt that my best wasn't enough?
  Does it hurt because it might never be?

Does it hurt because I have no answers?
  Does it hurt because I might not want them?