I heard the voice clear as day that day.
Running after my own conception, trailing off into the black, and I’m reaching out hoping something will pull me back.
The heaviness was of a particular swell, and I couldn’t bring myself to follow the usual routine of smiling in time for the daily grind. So this is where you’ll find me.
I had left behind me a trail of blood and stood back to admire my work. A wrenching, worthless, waste of time and space. Plodding something so big that will forever define me and remind me. Had I pushed past the feeling as I had done for so long, my song would be played from the trees.
I am, perhaps, relentless in my pursuit of my own humanity.
So now we’re supposedly a pre-war society. Minds lost to the major and minor that don’t resonate but yet we dedicate so much of our time to the foolishness, and wonder why we’re losing it.
I lost a tooth that way. When I was just a child. Went to school ignoring the pain, hoping it would take care of itself. Used the tip of my tongue to prod at it all afternoon. Pain got worse. Mum ushered me to the bathroom.
It needs to come out.
No, I screamed. It’s staying. Clutching my laser gun for safety.
Two days went by. Mum said I was in so much pain I refused to go to school. Scared someone would knock it out during rounders or just someone playing the fool. The day came, I had had enough of the pain. I yanked it with my fingers. Bore down that agony like a trooper. I remember. I felt a lot braver. Made out like the blood wasn’t startling. Pain no longer feels alarming. Delight filled my tiny frame.
Desensitised. Nothing moves me beyond a few tears of seeing others’ agony. That’s a lie. I’m still a big baby, but I feel I’ve lost that part of me that used to feel so much empathy and stood side-by-side with love.
The days when I can barely move, and I’m confronted with my own mortality, I revel in the formality of planning, all of this ending and leaving all my successes to my beautiful son.
If I spend enough time numb to this all, perhaps I won’t fall when everyone else falls, and I’ll see it coming before the sirens bellow above us. And I can pretend I feel nothing when they call out to me for help.
Much like that time I was caught off-guard by real love and tried desperately to escape it. I think I can fake it until the very end if I try again.
© PC, 2024
Broken Vase 