20121011 the things you say part 16

20121011 the things you say part 16


It is not my way to wait. It does me no good. I fidget with the anxiety of hours passing and no news no sound. I pace with the minutes back and forth or forth and forth. March a hole in the carpet. Wear a tear threadbare. I love the weave. The hessian bound so fiercely together, harshly entwined. Prickly and protecting. Wound, strong.

I can see reflections in the glass. See the space around me, bushes, hedgerows.  I am reflected back at myself with the landscape panning in monochrome. I am the inverse of an image. The negative space. Colourless.

I forgot to say that word did come. It arrived in a flash in a flurry. Nothing much. Nothing obvious. The date, do you remember the date?, the date was not mentioned, glossed over, absent. It was a dumb idea. It could not have happened. Not at all. Dumb.

The word was scrawled quickly. Bunched in a fist shape on scrunched paper. Thrown, across the sky until it landed here, there, thud. When I looked down and I saw it, saw the writing, my name, hysteria rose up through my body. Really. I felt that my rib cage would expand and explode with the operatic tone I needed to hit to release the wonder. The wonder. I felt I would split outwards blasting all in my sight to the ground with the strength of my roar. My roar.

You said nothing really. No agreement to meet, to sneak a snatch of this for ourselves in some uncommon place far from anyone who might see and say. Nothing of that ilk. And I had prompted you for the word had I not. Prodded and poked and pushed for a something. It could have been a nothing at all I suppose and so this, this was at least more than that, even if it was wrenched into the world by my own hand my own making. The word is at least a something. You impart your knowledge to me, offer advice on ways to make the passage of my time more interesting, more engaged with the land around me. You say, and I love this bit, you say, there is a beautiful cove, a place carved out of the rock made into a bay a formation of rock. I like the attention to detail, the joy I hear in the word that says the rock and how it is formed is noticed by you. You like it. I like it too. I have never seen it, but I like it now, very much. The bit that I love, that I hang onto, is the one half sentence that says, clearly, be careful. It is dangerous.  Be careful.  Oh. Oh. Do you care? Does this mean that you care for me? My well being? Does it mean you care more than a little? Or does it mean that you are trying to tell me that you care a bit? That you think of me? Do you? Do you think of me? How can I tell care from polite concern? But then, why would you express polite concern to me, a grown up? Fair enough, a grown up awash with the wonky, but grown up indeed. Oh. I hang on. Oh. I hang on. Oh.

My tummy is full of warm toffee. It heats me from the inside out and bubbles and pops away each time I think of those words. I am warmed through. I am coated with no cooling toffee inside. The warmth makes me smile at nothing at all. Oh look there is dust on a surface, how lovely that can be. Oh look there is an ice pink tinge in the dusk night sky. How did I ever miss that? Jam tastes so divine. The flavours of it burst in my mouth on my tongue. I am eating a bramble hedge. I am sitting inside of one and the earth is touching my feet as the sky licks around my head, strokes my face. The dampness of the ground is delicious. It works through my clothing to my skin. The pieces that touch it are cooler than the rest of me and my head, nearest the sky is glowing hot. Each note of birdsong stops my pulse. I never knew such beauty.

I hide the crumpled note, mere sentences long inside my person. It is out of sight. It is mine, just mine. It is mine.

Still I am here and I am pacing. I want more, don't you know, much much more. All of this that I know in this moment will be lost before I see you again, read you again. By tomorrow the strength that the word has to hold me will be gone, dust. I will talk myself round. I will sit, look, think and yearn. When the strain grows too hard to maintain, I will pace, forth and forth, wearing marks in the carpet, erasing wax from the boards. I want to you to come and find me. To sit with me. To want me. To know me. To laugh with me. To get me. To love me.  I want you, to love me.