This new life chafes at her
Like fresh skin, stretched
Taut over familiar tenderness
Of an old, raw wound
Nothing fits her now
Not time, nor place
As long-jawed expressions
Must face up to unflattery
And quit sliding into view
Over blank slate
moving on
Nauseous with nostalgia
Why on earth is it that even years after the event, I still cannot let you go? Your lopsided smile and ugly, grinning, gurning face plague me from hour to hour. I cannot sit in a room without smiling at some returning memory, and as warmth returns to my frozen heart, I take stock. Weighing all of my options carefully, I balance from foot to foot, leaning this way, then that. I am a pendulum, wavering, uncertain whether or whither to swing. I am a clock, stopped still the day you left me, and only now beginning to find my rhythm once more. As the shallow tick-tock of life creeps up my spine and tickles my veins into action, so the thaw begins. I must be wary, lest my wintry organs melt to a spring flood of love, and I, swept along by my own strong current, am drowned by it. Suffocated, helpless. A fisher, tangled and caught in my own nets and snared by traps of my own devising, struggling to break free. Wary indeed. As my love for you had become a mantra – words of comfort to be spoken before sleep and upon waking; My ‘I love you’s with their reedy echo in the damp morning air, somehow growing to a rope with which to hang myself – and swing I did, groaning in pain and tormenting myself minutely with your voice, your face, your scorn, derision, pity. Tearing myself down, piece by piece, until I had ceased to be. Where once I stood, proud and strong, shining brightly for all to see – lay a stone. My rougher edges smoothed to a bland pebble. My glittering core dulled by your swell and smashed on rocks of my own choosing. Broken and without pattern, without hope of re-making, mending, rebirth. I lie here, and I am troubled. That I still harbour feelings for you does not pain me or even shame me to action. Nothing I could do to myself or to others could change that fact. That these feelings grow stronger despite our mutual distance frightens and excites me. I thought I had no more tears, and now I often don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I can feel again. What I thought had to have gone forever has returned to me. Now I find myself at a crossroads with a choice. Do I go onward? Or do I turn back?
Katherine Shirley 