Chasing Sunshine

You look around you –
There are scores surrounding you,
Some smile politely, then make small talk,
None of which strays beyond the weather,
Which is no longer summer –
The chill a harbinger,
Of a lonesome winter.

The train left the station
A long while ago,
You are farther from the start,
Than you are to the finish.

Despite your discomfort,
You’ve come to realise,
That the best recourse
Is to stay put,
In this bustling carriage
So full of life.

Perhaps it is,
That some of it will rub off,
On your lonesome soul,
Nudging you an inch closer to whole.

The green of the fields,
And the blue of the lake,
Rush past you,
But you don’t take them in.

As the day gives way
To a gentle night,
You try to settle in
But sleep takes a while.

In the stillness of the night
When all else is quiet,
You are finally not alone,
Seized as you are,
By your demons,
Who’ve bided their time
Rather patiently,
And come hither now
To keep you company,
Even as you cower,
And shrink within
Your flimsy blanket.

She stacks them up,
From the bottom,
To the very top;
Each layer adding weight,
To the increasingly precarious tower.

When it comes tumbling down,
She is very nearly on her way out,
The lights dimmed,
And the silence around
Is deafeningly loud;
It is just as she had known it would be,
The unsettlingly eerie quiet
Before the crash of the storm.

She casts a final glance
At the broken remnants
Of her ungainly tower,
A multitude of layers,
Painstakingly gathered,
Over a handful of decades,
Each one hurt as much or worse
Than its neighbours.

Never gather them
Had been the refrain,
That she had ignored
Again and again,
And now the burden
Of this enormous tower,
Crushes her spirits
That give out in a breath,
Drawn one last time,
From beneath a mound
Of lifelong regrets.

This tidal wave that rushes in
Will carry with it on its way out,
A stray sandal and a beach towel.
The child who’s lost their belongings
Cries out as if to remonstrate,
A mirroring played out
For the benefit of no one.

Meanwhile what’s left behind
Seemingly untouched, perfectly intact –
The devastation of a broken shell
From the power of a far greater swell
Than what the ocean and his coy bride
Have birthed in this boisterous tide.

This moment is as universal
As it is uniquely personal,
It has landed in more than a billion ways
Across the breadth of human experience;
For some it will be a cherished slice of time
That they’ll carry within their hearts forever,
Others will have reasons to remember
This moment, that are not as pleasant,
And some will not detect its passage
As unremarkable as it is –
Yet, beyond the confines of the earth
It is but a single moment,
The same, and yet so different.

Perhaps it is that there comes a time
When your restless, activated mind,
Goes haywire in the relentless cycle
Of trying to make sense of everything.

Perhaps it is that at that time,
It stops circling round and round
Like a hamster in a wheel,
And finally listens to the sound
Of its own heartbreak.

Perhaps it is that at that time,
It comes painfully to realise,
The truth it had been staring at all along.

Every fibre of my being
Tells a story that is at odds
To what I’ve let on to the world,
And it is hard to exist in this state of dichotomy.

Wisdom cries aloud that there is relief
When the burden is cast down, or shared;
Yet there is also wisdom in protecting
What remains of my sacrosanct dignity.

For even the inviolable can be subject
To brute force attacks that defy norms,
And what is left in the wake of such as these,
Is a void – the word that rubs against an edge of this feeling.

I

I needed witnesses.
Wait a minute –
There were witnesses
Many of them
And they watched me
As I existed
In a state of utter shell shock,
Flabbergasted, dumbfounded,
All of that and more –
And they saw all of it unfold,
But my story, hasn’t been retold,
Not to me, and not to the world,
I had witnesses, yes,
But they were all devoid,
Of scruples, and of words.

II

I’ve built myself a room
Full of witnesses.
They are each ensconced
In earthern or plastic pots.
I stand back and look at them,
And for some reason, I’m pleased no end.
I needed witnesses,
And there are several now,
As there were then,
Just as silent,
Yet quietly observant,
And sheltering,
If nothing else.

III

I stand back and watch
My witnesses, with a touch of pride.
There is something to be said,
About watching something grow,
Even if contained, and not quite raw.
And then it hits me,
The sudden realisation –
They aren’t witnesses, are they?
For I have utter control,
On their wellbeing, their growth.
How could they not be,
But biased? Growing as they are,
Under what I’ve offered as shelter?
They would perish without a whisper
In a whisker
If I chose not to nurture.

Maybe it was the same
With the witnesses of yore.
Maybe they could not bear
To have the bond cut asunder,
Between them, and perpetrator.
Maybe that is how life unfolds –
When the witness becomes the attacker.

Everyone is in the relentless pursuit
Of shaping and telling their story.

You get to sit on the sidelines
And watch as these stories unfold,
Cheering them on,
Watching with wonder
In your dreamless eyes,
As they traipse through life,
Writing their stories
With gold yarn on rich red satin.

You are rooted in your spot
On the sidelines,
Refusing to get up and join in the run
To the finish line of grand stories.

You are far too tired
And winded from walking
To the halfway mark;
You would rather sit there,
On the sidelines,
And watch through dreamless eyes,
The dream catchers go about
Weaving their stories,
Into the fabric of life.

You tiptoe through your life,
Because it shares boundaries
With many others,
And you don’t want to infringe,
Upon what’s not yours by right.

You certainly don’t want
To make too much noise,
Or create an aura from matchless glory –
None of those things that rouse
Sleeping neighbours,
Much to their annoyance,
And subsequently, your peril.

No you don’t do any of this –
You choose instead,
To live your life quietly.

You take off your shoes
At the threshold,
And you tiptoe
On the wooden floor,
You dim your lights,
There is never any music.

And sometimes you wonder,
Just for a moment,
If you are still alive.

Nothing was stolen,
Nothing misplaced,
Within the house itself;
If it weren’t for the flower pots
Lying upturned in the garden,
And the fresh imprints
Of too big boots,
The lady of the house
Wouldn’t feel shaken,
But as it stands, she does.

“Nothing was stolen”,
“Nothing misplaced”,
They whisper under their breath
While talking to each other,
Or louder still, when offering her
Their sage reassurances.

She lies awake at night,
Not knowing who it was,
Nor even if they’d stepped in,
Through the open window,
And watched her as she slept.

Nothing was stolen,
Nothing misplaced,
On the face of it –
The dark circles under her eyes,
And the jitter in her being,
As she gathers herself,
To continue existing,
Speak louder than the footprints
Left in her garden –
They carry the burden
Of the footsteps that mayn’t
Have left behind
The imprint of a crime.