Published: 25/02/2022
two weeks after she left me i ran, i ran past the phantom rushes of noise-cancelled cars, i ran until my ribs curled with sweet and bitter sorrow. and then, when my blood pumped hot and fast enough that i could be sure that i was alive, i looked into the pink-redness of the sky.
the sky told me that if you stay in the bad place long enough maybe you’ll grow roots and spindly leaves will sprout in your mouth like canker sores and wild dew-drunk spirits will burrow into your eyes. it told me that it’s bearable here. the smog eats the moon, yes. but it also carries the city lights to the water’s edge, where they dance and flicker in great star-bursts.
then the fleeting window between dusk and nightfall, when the firmament hums itself into gentle slumber. the dusk had nothing much to say. but the dim-lit trees told me to let the foxes trespass. they wear the night as a cloak and can hear the breath of the peonies and fly on green carpets. all things considered, we’re lucky they let us live on their land. and the foxes, ploughing their fox-fields, told me that perfect little gardens grow in the holes she left in you. don’t cover them, don’t you dare. the plants need light. when the time comes, you will need to be a field of poppies.
you ever fed the ducks at night? watched them emerge from nowhere, half-asleep, and cut through the water in smooth arcs? sometimes, if the sky is clear enough, the stars descend. and the ducks, hungry for pellets, chase them like astronauts across the glassy sky.
i asked the ducks: in the deep night, when you’re nauseated by how much space is above your head and how little there is below your feet — what do you do? i think one of them tilted his head funny. but a particularly prodigious egyptian goose, with a little white collar that looked like a choker, told me to find your nearest lamppost and grip it, white-knuckled, until you feel the wrought iron roots tunnel deep underground. that’s where the light is.
and now i ask myself: what if you woke up and went into your garden in your night-clothes and welcomed the cold into your bones. what if you left the sleep in your eyes and stepped onto the half-thawed grass and let the birdsong lift you into the grey-cast clouds which somehow make the sun brighter. what if you emerged, chimney-mouthed, into the winter dew-light. the water trough has frozen over. what if you lifted the ice, ever so gently, to your eye, and watched rivulets of morning greyness cascade into the distant green.
what if you did that. the breeze would hold its breath, for no one has seen this colour before.