This move was meant to bring us closer together.
Yesterday I wrote a little about how I was feeling,
Untethered,
Caught in the eye of an emotional storm where I can feel the rope,
That links me to you my love,
Begin to lose tension and fall limp,
As I try to grip hold of it ever tighter.
I feel it’s rough fibres splinter into my flesh.
I make scars on my palms,
As my own fingernails curl into them forcibly.
To no avail.
Knowing that all hell is about to break loose,
As that circle of blue sky overhead drifts on,
And heavy debris,
And shrapnel,
Heave towards me on the air
In a shifting and abrasive wall of sound and matter.
This small premonition
Makes me feel guilty when I turn on the news,
Now anxious expectation
Identifying with the physical experience
I imagine you going through today.
Even as I write
You are there where the heavy winds are
Ripping at an island once solid
But thrown into question by the force of a storm.
Transformed into a flimsy raft
Battered by water from the ocean and the heavens
Spat at you by angry gusts.
Will the roof tear off?
What noise does the wind make as it hammers at your window?
How dark is the sky and can you find a hand to hold if you are frightened.
Are you?
Frightened. Or exhilarated,
Still youthful enough to feel invincible
Or wise enough to know your mortality
And without fear
Wonder at the power wielded by the elements.
Like the wind could gather you up and make you fly,
Take you around the earth and bring you back to me.
But you are not a leaf,
Or like Ariel an elemental.
You are not Icarus,
You are not even on a plane.
So we both know that it can’t.
It cannot carry you back,
So that
You can shelter here with me.
You are a tiny figure on an island in a vast ocean,
The world seething all around you.
And this is why I sit here and worry.
Because this move was meant to bring us closer together.
But you my love,
Have never felt further away from me.
This exquisite torture is one that we have placed upon ourselves.
We fooled ourselves into thinking we might escape unscathed,
But the closer it comes to the end
Of this special kind of limbo in which we have sited ourselves
The more insurmountable the difficulty becomes.
And now the planet interferes
Breathing into the divide and opening up a fresh void
To further hollow out my insides.
As I sit here fuelling myself with coffee
And the perpetual buzz of that worry in the pit of my stomach
Prevents me from eating
Makes moving a task.
Which is a blow when this move
Has already been such an ordeal.
When I already feel so far removed from that situation,
Where I could take it for granted that
Me and You
And our incredible girl
That wholly trinity
Was everything forever.
My island insubstatiates itself
Becomes a raft.
And I am not sure if I am just drifting,
At danger of drowning
Or if it is a rescue vessel
Bearing us back to safer solid shores.
I feel parts of it break away and wonder if we all still fit.
But still I watch with dread terror
That storm on the horizon
Waiting for some word my love
That Maria has been kind to you
And hope that the only flood that will tear through us two
Is relief.
And perhaps in time a returning tide
Of the great love we once held in our hands.
I wait at one end of the rope.
Hoping to feel the pull
Rather than fashioning a noose in my trembling hands.
Because this move was supposed to bring us closer together
So I will build a home around myself
And hope that you can find a way in.
That these walls become weather-tight again around us
And allow us to navigate
Substantial again
Against the wind
Forever blowing change in our direction.