A day of grey,
intensified by the light of my surroundings.
The glowing green limbs seeping in.
Orange and red blossoming
as I falter
from a fleck of something uncomfortably
familiar.
It surfaces slowly,
but falls suddenly.
Something gives, flooding my mind.
I resent that I bear the weight
of your pathway to maturation:
the loss of innocence in my eyes,
the optimism that was
needle thin,
from my father’s own hurdles on his
own.
“will you and Dad ever get a divorce?”
The kind of question that mutated as I got older
into an exercise or
habit of self-torture,
pushing the limits of my imagination,
and my threshold for pain.
“Would you ever cheat on me?”
I can feel the glimmer in my eye
when people ask me about it,
like picking a scab,
it hurts but I revel in it.
My mother knows the feeling.
It itches.
That’s how I know it’s still there.
So I pick at it
opening myself up
until my blood runs clear of it.
Until it becomes part of me,
rather than put on me.
Like hardened skin,
it is yours,
but would you want it if you had the choice?
Things move in circular motion,
Like waves,
Pain falls, withdraws,
and falls again.
I thought I knew you when it happened.
I learnt to know you again,
until February,
when I realised
I had lost my way
in your self-destruction.
Now it’s November
and winter
has eclipsed the spring, summer and autumn.
And I have eclipsed you.
You are unrecognisable to me.
Oh, to bathe in the light,
Let the green limbs guide me,
now that the water is nearly still.
