Lights went out all across London,
no birdsong,
no bells,
no melody on the wind.
Just a soft cry,
so small at first,
but growing,
as the windows of the world begin to glow.
White candles watch from windows,
as the pain of the person who loved him most is heard and echoed in every place they had seen.
Just a soft cry,
that grows,
finding new throats,
as the world reconciles with all that loss really means,
and what comes,
when the sun rises again.
I meet the eyes of my mother less and less,
because of my envy, that I could never get past,
and the fear that I will pass the point of being her pride and joy, disappearing into her disappointment.
My body is a clam that longs for a pearl,
passed over by the unkind sea,
that never saw fit to find me worthy of motherhood.
I don’t know that I’d be any good.
Children smile at me.
Children stare at me on buses,
but I’m sure it takes much more than that,
to make some cells into a success,
and maybe I just want a child in the way that a child wants an imaginary friend?
I want to pretend that I am not hurtling through the human experience with nobody to matter to.
I want to pretend that when I am gone, an echo of me will remain, growing stronger and louder every day.
I want to pretend that someone will need me, or miss me, or love me.
I want to pretend that my body is not full of poison and could produce something perfect.
I want to pretend that every well meaning but quite presumptuous person who told me that I would be a good mother was right.
I want to pretend I could give up smoking for a whole nine months.
I am in control.
Taking flight. No direction.
Finally, I’m free.
Finally, I’m free.
My wings, wayward, impatient,
there is a whole world.
There is a whole world.
Vast, expansive, so much space,
and it is all mine.
I thought of blue oceans and grey clouds as I passed the palace where I first kissed my latest unhappy ending.
We held hands outside of the hospital where I was born,
and he told me that the glow of my eyes made him feel frail and far too old,
so I took the ribbons from my hair and tied his mouth to mine,
an endless kiss that would silence his statements,
which may be correct,
but were inconvenient.
His voice is hauntingly familiar.
I’ve heard it before,
because he’s been mine before,
so now I’m getting familiar again with the ghost of heartbreaks past,
and her endless drone about how it could all be done any second.
My sweet, sane sunshine.
You never stay. My eyes close,
and you become smoke.
