They used to say, if you want something badly enough, if you believe in something hard enough, it will happen, you will have what you want, eventually. Now I think I've tiredly learnt that carrying something around with you in your pocket for a long enough time and someone will try to take it from you, because the probability of this happening increases,the longer you try and keep it your own. You'll probably never understand why, just that there are some nasty people out there who you can give a lot to but who you can't ever really do anything for because they'll never see you. Maybe you're meant to be invisible. Maybe, but not meant to be this quiet. I may be too quiet for my own voice, for my own body, but in the place of a commanding voice I've found I can pick up the very high-frequency supersonic screams that other people don't know that they're screaming. I can hear them piercingly.
A Monday night miracle, an understanding stranger smiles, a bus conductor doesn't need a ticket, waving a hand, it's okay, it's okay, and I sit and breathe it's okay. People do things I don't do. They clean up promptly after themselves and they regulate the way they spill, they make plans and follow through with them, they work alongside clocks and open mail and play music really loudly when they want to relax. They turn on televisions, open magazines, clean the tops of their stoves and put their lotion and slippers on at seven. I think I'm in a life I never really learnt to live in, and I'm lucky, lucky, lucky, and I'm happy, happy, happy, and I don't feel disappointed anymore when things don't turn out the way I think they will, when people don't turn out to be the people I thought they were. I don't think about things turning out, just watch it play out day by day, inwardly, and there is the curse of sentimentality. My belongings become indecipherable, one item from another, and my bones hang like strings waiting to be snapped loose, limbs like pipes instead of bones and skin, and heavy like the way old lace smells in old cupboards, the way people's goodbyes sound when you know they're never coming back. This is a bitterness and sweetness that goes on forever and ever. Trees waiting to be cut down. I start to think then about the tree that died on its own, the heart transplant, the broken mould, the forest that survives centuries and the myths surrounding the pyramids and one life trading itself for another. I wonder if trees can grieve.