TWO INJURED PEOPLE ARE SLEEPING IN MY BED
he has taken his medication to traverse the grey areas, between blankets, the silences & the voices, he is an injured person, he is drifting, i am beside him, there are two injured people sleeping in my bed, as for me, i can't feel anything, i told him to hold me closer & tighter & then a massage but that didn't work, so he fell into sleep & this is my story, upon the point of his large eyes closing, firstly a feeling of empty panic, of bloating up like a golden carp in a small & dingy tank, my desire for contact never fulfilled, no matter how close he was & disappearing into him wouldn't help, even if i could escape the boundaries of skin, then again, he wouldn't want me inhabiting his body anyway, like a parasite, like despair, like a little wish, a numbness, a clinging, a black hole, where emotion can be poured & stretched to invisibility, crushed & not felt, you could say, i have difficulty receiving signals, he could say 'i love you i love you i love you,' but what does it mean? i mimicked those love songs & movies for years & did not feel a thing, i could have been absorbing the words off a theatre ticket or a cornflake packet, but they had good music behind them to keep me singing along, so i sang alone & without understanding, he was a bird cage with ribs like the bars, then another time he was a cloak rack, on which to hang my coat or hat, then another time a doormat to place my shoes upon, then another time a god, faintly queer & inaccessible, simply held up like a cloud in the day, as i waited for rain like sand in a drought, too far to call out over such huge landscapes, i was intent upon connection, but my heart just wasn't in it, i fear i do not know how to receive love or its signals, when i touch him, it's less than hugging a tree, how i howl inside to break through, but even the howling is stifled, hazy, i have been existing on another plane, i can see the people walking around, shaking hands, making love, but it strikes me as peculiar, even sleazy, what does it mean? once i lifted my head above the haze & felt myself shining down like mist, just beneath the sun & as tall as a building, it was so brilliant, in that moment of feeling, every cell of my body was living, my heart was open to receiving, red, vulnerable & beating out like pulp, my god how the pain had set in, when it came to my attention, that which i had been missing out on, i held onto his back like a lifeboat or a surf board whilst he slept, his body twitching with medication, he too has his own pain & ways of breathing, this morning there are two injured people in my bed, the sun moves up the oven & the sink, it has chopped into the blue sheets with its tide of light as wide as smiling, we need a cup of coffee, some raw energy, ten bucks, a newspaper, the stretch of my dogs, along the 70's shadow of the retro furniture, a few kind words from one to the other, our past injuries are now unsettled, we are very tired, the day has begun, well, how are you this morning |
