She Was.

Cylence Gray was 12 years old when she stopped believing in god and started believing in love. Standing alone, and to the side, slender pale arms wrapped around her black waist, Cylence watched the magpie, head cocked, watching her. Cylence liked that her face was turned to the sky. It meant that she didn’t have to look at the spring wet hole they were slowly lowering him into. Cylence had been cracked open by grief and from that opening faith flew. Many years later she remembered. The tugging was the worst part. Being forced to look, to acknowledge, to know. As if somehow she could unknow. The tubes and the rattle rattle death breath, the corridors, closing in on her, as she waited, as they all waited. The mashed potato and gravy portrait her mother painted on the white wall. Her mother’s anger, at her, at her, for being there, for having held his hand and for having heard his heart beat when it stopped. She would never not know. Never unknow. But on this day, with her mudcaked shoes and her splattered stockings, Cylence forgets and blurs it all. Face turned to the blue she closes her eyes and wishes. Cylence wishes for love, for love that knows how it feels to walk on ground that cracks and opens under your feet, for love that holds safe. 12 days later, standing in that same spot, Cylence smiles at the tall boy standing six plots over. And as she shyly walks over to him, flowers in her hand, she sees his name engraved in the hard stone, just like hers, 6 plots back. She thinks it strange that they both already know where it ends. They shouldn’t know. He asks her about her ending and tells her about his. They know where it ends but they don’t know how to get there. Cylence memorizes the face of the boy with the ocean in his name, and later, when it rains, as it always does where they live, she feels warm.

Love constricts my throat, shuts my eyes drip. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Desire, (or – misplaced intellectual curiousity) sits – more comfortably. I wear it, approximately two inches above my hipbone, and that’s coldly accurate, because they’ve measured.

Sometimes, if I turn my head too quickly and I’m standing outside in the fading blue light, I can be someplace else. And when that happens, I have to squeeze my eyes shut because the smell in the air isn’t quite right and I can’t quite convince myself that I am standing well. The green canopy and the burst open summer dead seeds help.

Early this morning, the cat lies on my chest and I call her by the wrong name and I apologise but she isn’t offended. I still miss him. I think, if I heard his voice come crackling over the wires, something inside would break and shatter. My throat clenches shut, but I’m past crying, so that’s got to be a good sign, and I still believe in those, because I’m terribly earnest like that.

In the meantime, (which perhaps is all there is now) there’s people, black ink on snow pages, to uncover. And, sometimes, fall in to.

“Think of love as a state of grace. Not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega, an end in itself”

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

There is a coalescence. I’m busy creating meanings. Energetically.

I thoroughly recommend co-worker sex. It is endlessly amusing to stand, somewhere in the middle. To the left, your older, bigger, safer, lover. He stands, he drapes, he fidgets, he blocks doorways and fridges, and pathways. To the right, your prettier, sweeter, much younger, soon to be gone lover. He stands, he speaks softly, he asks. You smile in the middle and catch no eye as you ignore them both. The younger, sweeter one of the two, understands, shakes his head kindly and rejoins his group of friends. You’re the last one working. A final drink or two. The other, older, safer, dangerous one, he won’t walk away and you know it. It’s much harder to avoid his eye, his presence dulls the music. Later he follows you up and through the maze, but you’ve gotten good at this now and you make conversation with others. Unavailable. When he thumps into the room, you turn and look at him, his smile, his crinkly blue eyes, you see them, but you don’t. You look away casually. Just another stranger. This, this hurts him. You can see it in the way his smile freezes, the way his head drops and he walks past you, wide. It’s satisfying. You are not the only one feeling. You can make his face change and that’s enough to tell you. You know exactly what you’re doing.

Unexpected conversations, the right song at the right time, books full of relevance, a past so present it hurts my eyes, making the right choices, saying no to someone I know is being manipulative, recognising the signs, revisiting, skipping through old paths – this time feels full of discoveries that have always been there, previously unseen. Gifts. The last six months, the last year, the last twenty two. Clear. I cannot articulate what I think, what I’ve been thinking, all the gel, all the coming together, all the understanding. I feel like if I just wait a little, if I continue to lay awake at night, open, full of the same/different desire, I will form a sentence. One concise, simple sentence. That I will be able to offer up here, in this remembering. A sentence that will tell all, explain and illuminate and make perfectly clear sense. And under that sentence I will be able to draw you a line. And there, under that line, will be the white end of wondering and the crisp beginning of new. This is not wishful thinking. I am convinced by this time.

I am censored. Thoughts words actions quiet. Silence. Blank. My voice, whispered, hushed, still. Or. Loud, yelling screech. The point is, this voice is mine. Voice tells stories, spins webs, asserts, defines, delimits, pleads, begs, moans, asks, says stop. In standard letters typed slowly on bright white screens. Or. Cramped handwriting in small slim notebooks, stained, transcribed. Sometimes, the words get twisted, malformed. And when that happens, when they do that, they alter the voice, the pitch, the question, the request. And I am not really so pliable, not so easily. I write in straight lines. Left to right. I prefer it when you do the same. I will not follow your back and forth, your curly words that spiral without thought from your voice. I do not like words like that. Words like that are your words and yours only. There is no twosome in twisty words. Only the monotony of singular. Only a violence that makes me quiet, that takes my place and sighs on my cheek. I would like your words to leave me alone.

I always hated that other name.

The address is the same because a whole new blog is a whole lot difficult.

Thank you for coming.