To Stumble Upon Sentiment

Mutterings, grumbles, murmurs of starlings soar past my window; a cut-out, a Polaroid, an impenetrable portal to the world beyond mine. Soft skies, blue and pink and white,  interwoven, interlocked, imbedded in one another, whilst the gliding gull frolics through the mist.

If I could open a tunnel from my bellybutton, would you crawl through? Advancing amongst  the flesh and the gristle; Guts pushed aside, a low grumble. Would you get up to your shoulders in me? Your waist? Your thighs? Or disappear completely, leaving nothing behind but the dead weight of you, huddled in my abdomen.

What if roses bloomed At the taste of my blood; Apples grow as I fall from their tree. What if meadows flock with wild flower and bud at the sight of my weak mud-stained knees. What if I picked flowers by my own gravestone, bunches on bunches, swarmed with bees. I want to see all the life  I suffer for; I want to know  it’s not only for me.

My coats are never clean, my shirt cuffs frayed from all the door handles  they’ve ever caught on. Dress skirts creased, jeans thinned at the knees and stained from all the  people I’ve ever knelt for. Holes spatter along leather, denim too thick to yield, stitched to hold me in one place, at one angle; But it couldn’t hold me then anymore than it can now. I paint my outfits with the Earth, with the drinks I gulp  and the meals I relish and the hands that touch me, like I paint my birth suit, vibrant with sin, sun-kissed,  legs home to purple blotches I never noticed properly and  face flushed red,      in anger,            in shame, intoxicated  by the liquor of life.

Like a seed, we grow  in darkness, rooted to the womb, soaking silently. Not doing anything, not becoming anything, existing; present in the warmth of this place. But yet we tug open the curtains, tell our children to play outside, plug our ears to their protests, crane their heads to the sun, Tell them never to look away, even when their eyes dry out, even when the ground gives way, even if their heart stops beating. You tell them if they look long enough  all the darkness in them  will go away,  all the sin they were born of.  But there’s no light without shadow, and it condenses, spherical, lodged in their throat,  choking them as you watch blindly.

The air-con blew and took my warmth away, stripped the moisture from my tongue and the taste of them with it. And I can feel one body against mine - I can feel the borders of my entirety and all pressed against  but not given into. All the pressure, some of the body; most the mind; most unrelenting; some divine, all caught in my throat and pushed down ever further -   Deeper and deeper and deeper into my own depths, throttled by my own hands around my own neck - discomfort in comfortable emotion, Until I craft the music,  touch the light, shape the cadence of my strewn together woes, plucked from my wanting memory...

I bought a watch recently, and never have I been so astutely aware of how much I check the time. My mobile phone I glance  at many times, but,  with many uses, who’s keeping track of why one picks it up in a day. But with a watch, I know; I know I felt my existence  wear thin like paper,  considering if I’ve done enough  this hour to deserve the next.

Beyond the river, bubbling over the horizon -  the low grumble of civilisation. The barks and howls of conclusions, short-come, and tails of grandeur always two lengths ahead. But I rest upon the petals, fallen young, briefly captured in a moment I wasn’t born to. Drinking in the intensity of this time and this place and this treasure, long-forgotten amongst the noise.

Bites out of hours; Swallowing seconds; Minutes sprinkled like garnish. So much time  falling down my throat; settled in my stomach - Upset; unsure if I chewed enough times or treasured each taste. Or if I could trust each hand that peeled chopped, and stirred. Their time intertwined, poured into mine, gulped down my gullet.

I miss myself when I’m not here; I kiss the corners of the cell I led me into; trapped within, embraced between the bars, to have and to hold ‘til life rips us part.