by Paul Chronnell
The rain, death, life, moving house, paying bills, late trains, a mean word, a sly gesture, powerlessness in all its forms, a misread tweet, a tweet at face value, a tweet written but not sent, a message awaiting a reply, a cancellation, be it bus or plane or show or chicken order from a fast food joint.
The state of the world, the state of the country, the state of our face. What the politician said or didn’t say or should have said or didn’t factor me into while helping out them. The murders and rapes and violence and hatred and racism and sexism and anti this and phobic that and all swirled together with a stick of WHAT ABOUT ME!?
The aches and the tingles and the fuzzy words and the changes in strength and ability and stretchiness and breath and all the bits inside us we took completely for granted until the one day they stopped working like once they did. The need to take a pill a day, or an ointment or a spray. Then two, then needing a pill box to keep on top of it all, then a bigger pill box and a list on the wall. And a drawer once filled with scents and make-up and condoms and hair gel is now overflowing with doctors’ orders and unread googled print outs telling us the secrets to things we don’t really believe.
And the road, once straight and sure and tarmacked in that way that made bicycle tires sound like masking tape slowly peeled from a roll; is now pot-holed and soiled by things we didn’t expect and certainly never prepared for. And we lose sense of the time we would have stopped and bent and filled the holes before carrying on; instead now, stepping over and hoping we don’t turn an ankle when there’s no one around to help us up.
In it all comes and up we fill.
And out it goes…
In TV and punchbags and gardening attempts; in prayer and hoping and screaming at the ref as though his every decision were made to get under our skin, raging into our pillows because setting the house on fire is not really an option today.
Then there’s chocolate and sweets and crisps and ignoring the health pages in the papers we choose not to read. There’s the second glass and the one that finishes the bottle so we can take out the recycling and sleep badly and wonder out loud ‘why?’
There’s cycling and swimming and jogging and road rage and complaining about how can it all cost so much. There’s shouting at the man with the bit of paper who isn’t allowed to scan it or let us buy those cans, without the evidence we forgot to bring. There’s banging on the wall, overtaking at speed, pushing past, shouting and beeping without bothering to ask what tragedy might have got in the way of wherever we were trying to go.
And there’s pointing out everyone else is wrong or we’ve spotted a mistake or we pretend there’s no nuance or offer abuse and death as suggestions to those who don’t believe our beliefs. And there’s certainty in numbers without ever letting anyone else in, or wondering if we actually believe or if someone else did all our thinking for us, while we pulled on their replica shirt.
And each out is a tiny hole in the vast water butt of us. And the more outs the more ins we can fill up with each day.
Until we can’t.
And the ins reach the rim and the spill starts to slide and suddenly the death of a monarch we know, or a child that we don’t, is all it takes for the mind to press pause while we sink to the floor and miss our mothers, our fathers, our historic hopes and plans, making patterns in our tears on the floor, no longer strong enough to pray for it, but hoping, please, at some point, let the rain stop.
Oh My Goodness, Paul. That was raw, that pulled off the skin protecting our sensibilities. I hear you, I really do. Silvia x
Brave writing from heart straight to fingertips - thank you!