Kite tails

Kite tails

 

When I was sixteen years old and still dreaming in tints of rose my lovely mother fell very sick.

 

It happened too swiftly to suspect the incubus that had poisoned her bloodstream

for her screams were silent; Doctors’ notes ungleamed

and so those dreams of tinted rose flowed glutinous syrup behind my eyes for days,

and weeks

and months

and swoons, and turns and shades of moon until whence it sat high, in that Equinox sky -

her heart stopped.

 

It was a Sunday.

It was an October morning yet far from dawn.

I remember the fury of my father’s panicked cries as slowly I opened my blurry eyes to the senses and

to those walls that bled scarlet and

as blur faded and panic awakened in the back of the throat, like Sunday chapel bells I hear her name ring from his mouth again, again and then

suddenly I am in there –

planted, frantic in their modest bedroom under this Devil’s moonrise: head still struggling yet pulse doubled then eyes searing, tearing: the agonising shock

as I see her eyes: that iris of caramelised Autumn no longer glowing behind lids pinned back wide

like something had crystallised the flow of her vast imagination just as her soul had left her body and, like a kite, floated toward new skies.

 

Yet kites have tails: tails of scarlet and blue and diamond white and amidst the starlight,

affront those Gods who see it all yet speak no comforts

we must have jumped higher than we had ever jumped before!

We jumped so high to grab those tails amiss amidst those skies and wrench them down to Earth where we tied them to our bed frames with shaking fingers

and breaking hearts

kept intact only from the desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, those Gods might call to us and tell us that they were there: that they cared.

 

The ambulance arrived blaring those same lights and kites of scarlet, blue and diamond white

and in slow commotion: time flowing glutinous, syrup ocean her body rises into the carriage –

Cinderella, transformed at midnight

as curtains twitch; cats’ eyes through midnight blinds watching our plight, watching this moment and

seeing the seeping, open wounds on my heart as my poor father and I clamber, in pyjamas, into that midnight carriage that will whisk us away from this dawn so fallen apart and forward to darker pages.

“Cardiac arrest” they told us -

they: these mortals in white and green and blue piercing her tissues with more tubes than I could count across those shaking fingers.

“You’ll need a miracle” they told us -

they: these mortals with kindness in their hearts but lungs black with tar and with grit from inhaling too many brittle, wilted medical realities and

turning to the Gods with wet eyes aching and voice breaking I want to scream: Come on, man! (or, woman, because here I reserve no judgement though Earthed I am whilst thou art in heaven) –

my world lies apart at my feet in obsolete fragments that once made up my childhood and the likelihood that she will survive would be:

a fucking miracle.

I had never earned a miracle before.

 

Only ten years later is my mother recovered as much as she ever will be and her chest, so full of metal intricacy, is complete and sealed shut for the foreseeable.

I had never earned a miracle before but miracles must come in many forms like canapes, or bouquets:

lucky dip assortments of trick-or-treat

for the details of why such events indeed featured on that Sunday doomsday

still haunt our periphery like a shadow that you can never quite see but whose shade can be felt no matter the month or year.

The why? : stress, my friends.

The why? : the fear to speak.

The why? : because that is how the kites fly, after all, and life is nothing but a waiting tale for your tail to sail and only a miracle may stop the Gods, or their winds.

So when esteem is low; at times where woeful eyes are lined with brazen tears and fears, anxieties, paranoias billow like wildfires – or, instead,

when inspired and watching kites: oh, those short instances of blissful peace when brave hands work that sea breeze, those tails, up and down and round and round, those moments with breath bounding, on the cusp of a sensation

the breeze will stop and the curtain of shade will fall and then

again, despite the prized time and progress made

I am back in that modest bedroom under that Devil’s moonrise - paralysed, still wondering why what happened indeed happened and

how that miracle (call it what you will) came by my way at all and

how the power of language, of speaking open truths (and no, not the doomed “I’m fine”s but the raw and the uncouth truths) is the difference

between life and death and

with every breath nobody,

not anybody who I love will live in fear to speak up

ever again.

Ever.

 

My mother is my world and though today her heart still beats tickety-boo

it is mine, and I am hers,

and we have survived enough thunderstorms together that now we dance to the Bosanova rhythms of the night instead of fumbling, tumbling through tuneless white noise born from those doubts to speak so

pull back those cheeks and flash those teeth for to dance with your shadows is the only way to escape the ends that you have spent years never meeting.

She is my world and while she is and

while truths we speak while and

while I write poems the future is ours for the taking and

with all my might I will jump boldly towards those fluttering kite tails and wrap them about me like a coat of living, healing colours embroidered by my lovely mother.

For life is remarkable, always, so long as

you jump high enough.