Category Archives: identity

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Reverb (Not Right Now – Right Now)

1. Right. Fine. I’ll just look at the sky then, I’ll just notice how the may tree berries echo the salmon shade of clouds. Soft charcoal trees on the Ridgeway where I used to walk. I know, I know – someone made it February. What can I do? 

2. Pale lime and almost moss green of the parsley into soft lemon, fading now. Bright spots of chrome, diamonds on my tap, underneath uncertain cloud. Strawberry pink plastic peg on the Delft flower pot like a boiled sweet, almost translucent, promise of a saccharin hit. Not right now. Nameless old lady walks Jasper. I know the Jack Russell’s name but not hers.

3. There’s too much sky to my left, in the place where the Medical Centre used to be. How the building site disturbs me, can’t they see what they’ve done. I’m there somewhere in the rubble and cement dust, somewhere in tiny pieces, as if to ram home the point under their bulldozers. The High Viz jackets upend me.

4. If I iron, if I ease out creases and watch the smoothness spread then I’ll be able to take deeper breaths, then there’ll be control, of sorts, even if it’s only control over fabric. It’s a start.  

5. Cursor flashing, marking time. Come on in, the keyboard’s lovely. You’ll be alright, I’ll take your hand, your tapping finger, the one with the Lapis Lazuli ring. You know the one, the one with the hidden depths.  

6. My body starts to regulate. I feel tears drop off my cheekbones. I focus on the sound of the heating creaking through the walls. I notice the cold slate sky but it still warms me. I wipe my eyes, the boiler clicks off. Round we go again. I will be fine. My breathing settles.

7. Shhh, I’m not really here right now, so I’ll be quiet. It’s a honed skill but one of which I’ve grown tired. Workmen are tearing up the street, new fibre optics coming in, territorial parking in dissary. They saunter with wheelbarrows, owning the day, smashing up the pavement where I used to walk. Shovels scrape. I might nod to them if I go out, might not. See how I feel.

8. Boiler firing up, pipes chuntering regardless of where I sit or what I do. Underneath it all, like Miles Davis in the background, softened but there, inescapable. And through windows Yesterday’s Girl catches my eye. I’m trying not to look at her but she’s coming close.

9. The radiator tries its hardest. Still fails to get through to me. For a while all it can do is watch me go into a flat spin.

10. Hello granite, it’s been a long time. I’ll just lie here then, I’ll just be smeared out under your might and grace. Don’t mind me. Do your worst. And then. Throat punch. I swallow down, gag on my words.

11. The reliable expansion of my ribcage, my diaphragm filling with air. And in the micro pause before the outbreath all the other worlds play out around me. The possibilities of all the lives not lived and all the moments of this one cascading, overlaid, looping in a numinous form, every second a symphony again and again and again. And then I breathe out. 

12. What do I do with this then? White lines on the window ledge almost as though it’s a bright day, almost like a reflection of the sun, as though spring is demanding of me. I have noticed. It’ll be Thursday soon then I’ll look. I mean it will be Friday. Friday, not Thursday. It’s Thursday I’m careening into. I stumble over words and thoughts. Fraying.

13. It rained today, of course. I fought it hard, did my best, even tried my salsa moves. But my body knows better, it takes me to the Relative’s Room, too much orange paint, I don’t like orange paint, not now. Why didn’t they paint it blue, something calming? I press my face up the window, it’s cold. Black buildings reflect back at me. Harsh, empty, soulless shapes. Rain smacks the glass. I push my forehead into the pane. I feel nothing. I try to breathe. Tomorrow’s coming.

14. Rooms. Faces. Magazines, low coffee table. Their soft sofa. More faces. Mouths move. I forgot to take the food out of the oven last night. Some things I forget. I make a fist with my small hand, neat nails digging into my palm. Little indents, tiny smiles. Fade. Repeat. The heat in my lower back, push against the radiator, bring me back to now. Branches tremble in the faint breeze. Yes, watch the branches. Faces. Mouths move. Repeat.

15. I don’t remember my shoes. I wonder what I wore, not that it matters. I remember my coat. Blue. Blue curtains. Flash frame, freeze frame. Repeat. And yet sound is distant, vague. Unsure shoes always walking corridors. Rooms. Faces. Words. Always words. Mouths telling me things. Moving mouths. Still, the berries have almost gone off the may tree outside my window and the starlings in my roof embrace the day. Berries drop, some get eaten, some rot. Some I brush out of the way. I make movements with my arms, hold the broom like an oar, heave myself through thick waters and remember I have a body. My body tries to come back to me, hesitant, fracturing. Leave my head with the berries. They roll around, relational, atomic. I notice crocus pushing through the lawn, hesitant, striving. I brush my thoughts into the road. Spring soon. Always flowers. So many flowers and scents and dancing to come. And music. And colours. My body starts to come back to me. Carry me back. Bring me back. Make me Now. Make it magnificent.

Repeat. Make it magnificent.

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27 Million Degrees Fahrenheit

Back in November 1895 someone was feeling the warmth of their new born baby. Someone whose name I do not know. And I wonder if she watched the sun come up like I do, if she saw the edge of a winter’s sky bleed into the day. Soft, quiet bleeding like the pulsing that bought my grandmother into the world.

And I wonder about this woman I never knew, did she look up into the velvet sky, streaked with tangerine, did she pause from staring into the eyes of her baby to wonder about her descendants, did she listen to the birds, in their agitation, sensing gentle heat to come.

And wherever she lay and breathed on this winter’s morning 128 years ago, her breath made me possible. Her cries of pain enable my words now, allow my thoughts as I watch the street waking up, my neighbour scraping the blush of frost off the windows of his car. He doesn’t look up though, he doesn’t see the soothing sky, the swaddling clouds around me now, around my great grandmother back then.

And I think of her, reach out to her, wonder about her joys and losses, the places in herself where she felt most alive, as though she was the only person to experience such intensity. And could she imagine this world 128 years ahead?

I look up, nothing is still. The birds quiver, the steam leaves the flue of my boiler, spiralling, dissolving into the air like the unseen atoms of all the generations before me, holding me while I’m here.

And my thoughts seep out, a snapshot of a moment, of all of us alive right now, now as I put these words out into the universe, now as you read them, all of us doing our best to find certainty in this unending change.

And just before the sun spills over the rooftops, just before I’m dazzled in its spitting helium, I wonder about our world 128 years from now.

Will someone be looking up, watching the heat and light come back, will someone know my name, will someone remember me at all? And the planet spins on its axis, chemical reactions take place and people affect each other. 

And in the photons dancing all around me I feel the echo of my great grandmother, the gift of new life in her arms and the capacity for love.

And people busy themselves with work and commitments, responsibilities, rushing into the day. I want to shout to them from my window. Live, just live NOW.

128 years from now the sunlight will come back, there will be dawn to melt the frost on a winter’s morning and I wonder who will be grateful that I lived.

And 96 years ago last week that tiny baby girl at my great grandmother’s breast, gave birth herself and held the youngest of her three girls in her small strong arms. And 37 years after that moment, one of her daughter’s eggs which nestled in her abdomen when she was born, merged with another force and sparked and burst into life.

And there in the bitter blackness of an early winter’s morning I pushed out. There, on an unknown bed in a hospital that’s long since been pulled down, I took in air. My lungs filling in consequence of a woman I never knew.

128 years ago, and I am grateful for her womb, for her love, her strength and her life.

Grateful for them all.

The women who made me possible.

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Pockets (Underland #3)

I’m called to stand on my doorstep, I’m almost outside.

I need to feel the cold air bite my skin, the wind whip my hair, the rain brush the pavements as I feel my way to you.

There’s something about the blackout of early evening, something pulling at me to leave the house, escape the four walls that surround me.

And the rain shines the pavements as I puddle jump, rushing, a sense of hurrying to find you.

I’m wrapped up in red fleece, blown to kingdom come but I still know where I’m going.

The tall trees beyond my house twist and yearn like they know, like they truly understand despite the storm. I stand in the cold, hugging my earl grey. I crave this weather.

And if I’m still and listen, if I stop and feel then it’s almost as though there’s nothing inbetween us, no distance, no space and no time.

I shove my hands deep in my pockets, things rustle, like gifts, like precious moments to come. I hold tight to their promise.

Street lights, shop lights break the black, dazzle in the darkness, reflect up at me as I splash towards you. People blur, irrelevant.

And then later I’m there, shimmering, sparkling at your side.

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Beautiful Bright Red Balloon (Underland #1)

And then she knew just what to do, she would come here. Here, to reach him, here, in the place that only they knew. She breathed out and slowed down and wished for him to do the same.

The balloon was exquisite. It beamed out light even on the darkest days and she would pull down the red ribbon by which it was tethered and bring it close up to her face. She looked inside.

And all of their moments swirled and danced inside like the rainbow colours on a soap bubble and it calmed her. She held it close like a new-born in her arms, like a precious thing to be cherished, to take care of, to be loved. And it was. And it is. And it will be.

Here, in her chair near the end of the year and if she listened she could feel him reading her words, hoping that she’d reached him. The balloon bobbed, followed her wherever she went, never left her side, as she would never leave his.

She’d come here, that’s what she’d do, for as long as it takes. And in the quiet she watched the balloon softly moving, tender, patient, compassionate.

A prayer between them.

Always.

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Murmuration

And just like that, her head scattered across the fields. Wings battered into wings and feathers drifted down to nestle in the hedgerows underneath.

It was as though no decibels came before her, or after her, as though she, herself, created all disturbance on the air, that her thoughts created sound waves through the universe.

The fields shook under the force of her birds in flight. The sky heaved. She waited.

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Viaje en el Tiempo #2

I don’t mind that the night is here, blowing through my letterbox or that the trees are tousled and distressed. I’m safe inside.

And deeper still, inside my mind I’m casting shadows on white concrete, with linen draping off me in the heat. Saturation turned to full, in the welcomed citrus hues outside Matisse’s house, the shuttered windows winking at me, telling me that everything will be ok.

If I lived there, I’d be up early every day, lace- trimmed skirts, bare shoulders in the sunlight. I’d buy oranges just for the scent of the juice, for the feel of the pith under my nails. I’d always smile.

But here, autumn is gearing itself up to shed. It’s fine. It’s all fine though. I spend my hours in Nice, where time frayed, where the white sand said don’t worry. And I listen in the tangerine light, I let it show me the way.

There was a fuchsia toy poodle in Cannes, in the afternoon, the owner dressed in the identical shade, both of them teetering and glittering. I didn’t see them myself, but I heard a tale about them.

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Verdant

Lilies grew out of the scar on my tummy, daring, irreverent and girlish. They flung their arms wide; they didn’t care. Lisianthus burst up and out, willowy, confident, pretty and they knew it. They waved at the lilies who nodded in respect. Painted ladies and red admirals fluttered from the same places where the flesh had bled, their damp tissue paper wings felt cool against the air. Meconium pumped out, squirted across the scar as if to say, I love you, I remember. As if to say, all the pain, the hours of spasms, the empty walls I looked at, waiting hoping, are all tucked away and understood.

The nights spaced out, the ceilings passing over me, all locked away with care and when my language broke, when halos caressed each word that left my mouth, when every breath was forged from armour, when the weight of the shields tore my muscles to shreds, I kept on holding. When every cell pulsed with one cause, when no one could help me but the tiger claws that grew, claws of steel against the battle that consumed me.

Then.

Then my scar erupted, then it exploded out in trees, oaks towering from my tiny form, their roots soaked in my blood, fed from my placenta and willows softened out the gash, they wept over the chasm where my abdomen had been, they wrapped their tendrils around the scalpels and the knives, they paved the way, they saved me. They dropped leaves into my hollow and from the mulch, from the deep rich earth inside me, petrichor filled the theatre, soil sodden with my tears and surgeons took a step back, as I expanded, I roared life into the room.

Eagles flew out of me, feathers caked in green and red, they soared around the room, under their spotlights, singing loud. I remember the golden flash of their beaks, they winked at me with eyes that saw more than I could and, in the crater, where my abdomen used to be, a forest thrived, birds cheered, creatures danced, insects giggled in the sunshine.

I watched the ceiling smile down on me as I stroked the wound, hand bloodied and joyous. We Made This the corpuscles seemed to say. And my body rejoiced. My body was perfect, my scar came to show me the way.

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Shimmerings

Right now I feel I am hiding from the blossom as it holds onto the branch but I know it’s out there, I feel it waving, bobbing, whispering to me from outside my window. It won’t be long before I look it in the face and I can hear it calling out to me, look up, look up, look up again and I know I will.

My trees know just what to do just like my clouds and I am gentle white and pink and sometime rippling rose. I hear them just beyond the glass, framing the trees, throwing their colours to sky and I breathe out. I breathe out as if for the first time, I breathe out like the morning when I woke and squealed and rushed and laughed.

And women fussed around me, hair was curled in ringlets and my feet secured in ivory silk. They would hold me up and they did, as they do now and I breathed out. And I was bound up in taffeta as I always would be, strapped in and laced with ribbons at the back. And at the front, encasing my heart, I was held in rich wine velvet, the deepest red because I could never wear anything else, soft and strong, the unconditional love around my tiny form.

And it’s ok I tell myself, and it is. I can smell the fabric, hear its rustle, taste the rose pink lipstick on my mouth and I am there.

Ready to be wrapped in blossom, petals on me, decorating my features, tickling my neck like confetti dropping down. And I shuffled, I clicked heels down our pathway and nestled my boots in the footwell of the car and later, not much later, they moved over ancient stone, disturbing the dust of centuries, the remnants of other women who had walked and stopped and spoke and loved.

And in the echo of those before me I stood, silken and shimmering like something waiting to emerge and I did. I raised my bouquet to the sky and petals fell around us, photons warmed us, like they do and sunlight lit red velvet, lit my face and the scent of blossom filled us up, as if to saturate the day in certainty and it did and it does.

I’ve been hiding from the blossom for a while now but today I peered back outside my window, took the deepest breath to drink it in. It’s all ok, it whispered to me and I heard it. It reached me, saved me yet again. The wisdom fluttering down through years, curled and chaotic just like me, but it will settle, rest itself soon and nourish the soil beneath my trees. I’m drenched in petals and confetti yet again. Thank God my flowers know just what to do.

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Der Blaue Reiter

I’m careful with myself today as though I’m a blue glass horse like the one I had as I child and I’ve just turned up in a small box, packed with polystyrene to keep it safe.

I remember the thinness of its legs, how I could see through them and if I lifted it to my face and pressed it close to my skin, all the world was cool and and hued in blue. I never named the horse, it didn’t seem to need it. It was mine to ride in the middle of the night when no-one else understood me, but he did.

And it was always male, always strong, he always understood me and I’d pull myself up by his mane and clamber on. We’d ride, it would take me out across the fields, always jumping hedges with no care and I would ride as though I was born to have a horse beneath me, feeling his warmth and strength against my thighs. In the middle of the night with my hair streaming out in chaotic ribbons behind me, rippling in the darkness like the ink blue clouds breaking dawn.

There was a sense of being edgeless, without walls to bind me when I rode, timeless even, almost formless, just the presence of his warmth beneath me and the shimmering hold of the night.

Afterwards, I’d place my horse back on the windowsill and rub my legs, how cold they were, how thin but I’d escaped myself just for a while. I’d turn my blue glass horse to face the window, always looking out, always focussed on the places he could take me and today I am so careful with myself. I note the places where I’m chipped but the light still shines through me and if I rest a while longer I will get beyond this windowsill where I seem to live.

And on the blustering wind the words seem to come at me through at the window, ‘don’t drop me, please don’t let me break,’ they say. They rattle the glass on this spring day calling autumn, in this muddled mess of seasons where I live.

I am careful with myself today, so lift me up and hold me close, watch the world turn to blue again. And if we’re quiet in the middle of the night, we can charge through the fields, we can kick up the earth, feel our muscles light up in the moonlight.

I am careful with myself today, I am my small glass horse. I am blue, fragile but the sun still shines out through me.

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Day Tripper

To the woman in the trench coat on the bus, with longer, thicker, darker hair like I used to know, you will be fine. And I watch her from the back seat of the bus, years away from her but she doesn’t know I’m there.

And if I stood up and wobbled with the motion, if I plumped down besides her and took her hand then she would jump. And she’d wonder who the older woman was as I leaned in and whispered in her ear. But she doesn’t jump because she cannot see me sitting there. And I push the hair back from her ear and whisper ‘you’ll be alright’ but she cannot hear me because she’s rushing. She’s stumbling up to A & E while her young boy is at Primary and I watch her hurry as I walk behind her and I know the things that wait for her behind the heavy doors.

And if she could sense me, she’d look behind her and wonder why the older woman followed but she wouldn’t stop to question because there was no time.

And I watch her as the doors to A & E swallow her up whole leaving nothing but the memory of her rushing through. And I’m waiting to take her hand and squeeze it tight, I’m ready to catch her when she faints as she will do and as I cradle her younger body into my arms I’ll stroke her forehead and tell her she’ll be alright as we both rest there on their sterile scrubbed white floor.

And if she could hear me, if she could look into my eyes, she’d not believe me but I hold her close and keep her warm. She scatters into tiny pieces and I’ll call out her name. I’ll make everything alright for her because it will be, in a way she’d not imagine, if she could only hear me and if she could see my form.

To the woman in the trench coat with longer, thicker, darker hair like I used to know, I promise you, believe me, you will be fine. And somehow, somewhere my words will reach her and I’ll never ever leave her side.