39 1/2

39 ½

i have touched the wall of the hospital where i was born – since being back here again – the unfamiliar red brick wall, cold and worn. i felt a sense of might, a fledgling right to entitlement from these streets i now call home and new. this faded fast when i looked closer; saw right through. on the far side of this feeling, a fogged, hollow awakening, that has left me reeling with the view.

now, i understand that which i didn’t before, that it is a cold, damp blanket called hope that i wrap around my ideas of something more; a foolish shroud worn for too long now, for sure. my dreams have expired: each use-by date scratched out with a bitten down biro – like long neglected spices at the back of the cupboard, bought on a sudden optimistic day, when a bright new recipe enveloped my thinking, in an unexpected way.

this has been a study, protracted and sore, unfolding in scraps, barbs and tangles, twenty years and more, the conclusion arriving sudden and stark, surprisingly raw; the realisation of how easily we disappear, when there is no one new to see us anymore.

ghost-like i stumble into the eyes of strangers, silently beseeching them to acknowledge me, as unseen, we are none and no one. just a shadow shape reflected in the pale glass of a homeward bus; staring back from a closed shop like a mannequin left, bereft by sudden bankruptcy.

this experience, is meant to be unwrapped through being shared, urged to evolve by another being there…a touch here, a giggle there…lazy weekend breakfasts…waterfall fingers through sleeping hair…embraces, promises, plans wrought from maps, and cards, and holding hands…magic, discovery…guiding one another over shifting sands…

and despite the strongest hope, of a fragile man, the board is blank, the ink running dry in the absence of a plan. faced, now, with a trembling reality exposed over many years, that forever always remains a taste away, this life a rich flavour that so quickly sours. until you end up wrestling with worms, beneath a carpet of wilted flowers.