I don’t have anybody to talk to about these things. Even if I did, I would never be capable of finding the words to fit the war that beats its drums out of rhythm with my own beat, beating back against myself as I push a path forward through the universe that only goes in circles anyway. It’s yet another feeling without a word. These not-yet-existent words lower and tremble with such loud violence they could bring down every library wall. I leave notes in the condensation on taxi windows (‘I’m sorry’; not ‘am I there yet?’ But ‘will I ever make it far enough to know where that is?’). So I try to write it down, and out it comes like nonsense mumbled in sleep. When I first lived alone after so many years, I noticed that I had begin to talk to myself. It wasn’t thinking out loud or singing in the shower. The voice was mine but not in my head like before, either. The words were spoken by me, and mostly to me, although sometimes to the absences that were bothering me, living alongside me and occasionally taking up more space in my cluttered world than that which I was in the presence of. I recovered from my preoccupation with absences several years ago. My brain was just trying to help, I suppose- the loss being not only emotional but perceptual, it could fill in some of those empty spaces. It didn’t help because I found no comfort in the hauntings, or the one-sided conversations. I’d rather go about stumbling into hollows than share my alone time with ghosts.
What is it that I can’t speak or effectively write about in this unavoidable life? The ringing alarm and how it calls to mind histories of fire escapes. The broken door from when paramedics kicked it in. The little hours, the nights without the courage to close my eyes, the mornings coming so close, but my closeness becoming somehow a little less crippling every day. Clouds folding over, packaging up all the absolutes. The futility of some things, the sacred nature of others, like remembering to breathe, to stay in orbit, to let the anxieties bleed right through without pooling on the floor, and to let the city in and these new people in (though the city spits people out) and to let them meet the genuine person I had hated silently and fiercely for years until being left alone with her and realising that armfuls of her is not hopeless; I am at least worth something. My bus-stop mind will probably wait there indefinitely but I hope someday it will travel far enough away from the old loneliness that routinely follows me around and close to where the simplest words and the simple ways to love are enough.
The TV shows I watch are violent and strange and I like the ones without a resolution, where the questions remain unanswered and sit behind your brow as it faces the screen. Staring in when it’s over, my own face is shadowed back at me. I feel like a wide-eyed alien in a small godless world of grey and yellow, and I have no real name, just hundreds of books. My hands are unfamiliar and warm. Sometimes they touch a cheek and upon contact the light that floods into my mouth turns from lemon to something sweeter. The sky is dark as a fist whenever I manage to get out these non-specific words and jumbled reveries. Over the buildings across the street, the moon is a creamy gold and you could see all it’s contours- I would say edges, but circles and spheres don’t have them (or do they have infinite edges, or are they all just one edge?). It hums to me, I hum to myself. Sometimes I sing and look for stars that might be pricking our sky, leaving tiny wounds of white. I see them so seldom, but most frequently at bus stops.
