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OPEN SUITCASE
She was a book. But he read her face like an open suitcase. Roxanne said, 'I tell lies that parallel the truth.' She confided in her reflection briefly. 'That way I don't fuck up. That way everybody's happy.' She released things about herself in small compartments. It was as though she were opening a suitcase up. I don't like standing next to those armaguard trucks. You never know what's gonna happen next.' You warned me about danger. I'm confused unable to read signals myself and so rely on others. I do not know where the threat is coming from. It surrounds me like terrifying air. The atmosphere is hostile. I step back against the wall, a frightened eye. There have been problems of not recognising dangerous explosives, of entering prohibited land willingly and without protection. Miraculously, I returned unscathed. There have been problems of seeing danger, when there wasn't any, and of not having the confidence to know, that I can cope with any situation now. I secretly adore danger like a velvet bee in a clover field, and release it like pollen dropping from the legs. We peel the orange like my cranky layered psyche, and disguard the heavy skin. It was all so simple in the end. I was pale, sour, twisted and complex like rind. If you'd stop acting like a fucking little gangster all the fucking time, then perhaps we could work on this thing together, make some sense out of it all. You are so full of shit sometimes, Roxanne. It's
no small wonder your lot managed to rob any banks at all. It's a wonder they just don't sit around talking shit all day. God knows why we fucking bother. God knows why we fuck at all. I'm always living it up out of suitcases. It's very hard to break the pattern. I had to climb out of a window into the sky. I really don't know what to believe, that my father tried to kill us or me. He was on drugs. He fell asleep just before, or just in time. I'm sorry. I had a breakdown. I had to leave my cats, my books, my toys. I lost everything. Nowhere is a place for me. I never had anyone. I don't know what love is. They never argued. There was just silence, swiping a piece of air, a black gun coming down, the thumps against the wall in another room, muffled sobbing. There was no shouting, now when they shout it's deafening, I hate that tense hot feeling, like holding anger in, like those westerns in the saloon just before the mock fighting and the shootout, just before the men get thrown across the tables with the perfect left hook and grunt, just before Shane the barman ducks behind the bar, and all the glasses get shot out, just before the slated doors swing wide open and a stranger trusting no one enters. That is me. I'm the good guy. I have guns on my hips, warmed by the sun and then by my hands. I have practiced the art of not overreacting, I hate the tension. But more than that, I hate the shooting, the swearing, and the name calling hurts my ears,
rings inside my head like bells. This is because there was only ever silence, and small noises in the silence that echoed. This is a strange world, where no place is safe. I turn over in it like a leaf. At other times I am a silver bullet asleep in the sand. Inside a house I am finally cornered. I want a home, a partner, children, the permanent life, a routine, but I don't know how to go about it. I never had it so I don't think. I only know it exists by reading, songs I hear on the radio, or by what others tell me. I rely on information. People are stars omitting radio sigals. Some are less obvious clusters, neutrons deeper in space. The prison has no bars on the windows. The walls are birds. The sky is full of them. Sit down and breathe. Please don't escape too soon. Identity - I have none. I don't want anyone to see my little room. That is not myself, just where I sleep tonight. I move on. I move on. You can open my suitcase, put it's already open. You can check my discs, but I wont be saving that information. Stop your yelling and swearing because I don't like it. How about you treat me with a bit of respect. You say I'm aloof at first, perhaps that's just shy. You say I'm evasive and avoid straight answers. The suitcase was left open. You will hear them when you earn them. Let's just talk about our surroundings, and those things we both have in common, rather than spilling our guts. I don't want them to see where I sleep. They will
think it represents me, when it doesn't. I receive interstellar signals. My white dish learning everything via each rotation. Anyway, we are alone. The steel bridge collapsing with the weight of hollow wind from the harbour. Love exists on a lonely hill inside the sun. All my life I travel towards it. The hill is blue golden. He does not love me, but it doesn't mean my mother didn't. I recognise that cold look in his grey eyes. This time I laughed. I wonder if sometimes the sun laughs when we think about its raining, all the fragile grasses blowing down. They all loved me the best they could, but at the end of it I felt alone. Nothing could fill that void, that place inside myself where signals aren't received. The relationship therapist said, 'we all have these gaps, but yours are a little larger than most. The boyfriend said, 'no matter how much love I give to you, it's not hitting the mark, it's not enough, you can't feel it can you?' I stared at him from across the crowded room with vacant eyes. Then I was trembling, his hands on my cheeks. Then I was sobbing. It was frustrating the way I wallowed in everything, in my endless universe without emotion, a real little star. After relaxation there were some faint sensations. They felt like a big raindrop on my cheek, or one leaf bushing past. They were beautiful jewels. I worshipped them. I was thankful for the little things and excited by my future possibilities. All the hands of the
world were upon me again. I had a threesome that felt like an octopus in a tepid northern ocean current. I wanted to watch the two men kissing. I wanted to kiss them both, and to have two children by them, a boy and a girl. I really loved them all. I want love everywhere and everytime like leaves and roots intertwining. I can't get enough love. I had a dream of a banquet. I invited everyone I ever knew. The tables were empty of food, but there was a lot of love on them. I hugged everyone I ever knew. I just wanted love and affection and goodness everywhere, like five hundred donkeys who adored their saviour Christine. Those donkeys knew where the pasture was greener. If someone doesn't love me in my immediate evironment on my intimate terms, it won't be very pleasureable. The therapist says, 'don't worry, here's fifty thousand more marooned, they all live with the substance, like a whiff of fog. Relationships are like driftwood, that you often have to let go of in a rough surf, or learn to grow tough and resistant, float into the mangrove forest like a seed pod, recoginse that the roughest tides will take you there.' I noticed myself working and the empty space. How to fill it up, I thought. How to fill that space with yet more nonsense. How to yell over the top of the television and the noisy fan when everyone else is talking and no one is listening, and really here is nothing but the sound of my voice, as people's heads
turn away. Why do I write when it is not required here, and why do I bother to fill this space. Now I was suddenly conscious of this. I looked around and thought, yeah right. We're all alone and you know better than me, because you have lost a partner. He loved you as he passed from this world forever. He never said it often but when he did it really meant something. You were there for him, but you could not accompany him. Nor could you save him. He had to go into oblivion, where I believe he does not wait for you. You know that love does not conquer all. I'm sorry. I tried. Love is the most important thing I know, but it's a little globe whose power fails. To think if I had children. God if anything ever happened to them, which it does and often, I might leave this world behind then. It's not as if the dying children are taken away on the wings of a great bird. They go fearful and often miserably in your weary arms, having never having lived their lives, and knowing that you could not bring them back. You could not enter their skin to love them. I am sorry for all the parents who have lost a child, and who are left behind like an open suitcase, with all their identity taken away. We can only look for small mercies, where there is rarely mercy. So thank you for the little paper flower of love, that you passed into my hands this morning. It was superb like an ice carving, or yet another drawing in the sand at low tide. |
