Some mornings I have weights on my ankles and other days wings on my back. Tumbling, bumbling, stumbling over words, I rumble.
Knit one, purl one, hold tight that yarn, never drop a stitch.
I catch my shin with the razor and watch mutely on as my entire vessel is choked of all blood, seeping indolently across a naked bathroom floor.
Engulfed by a congealing pool of dropped stitches I lay, weighted by the shackles of lost dreams and waylaid hope. Wallowing in a remorseful tide of bloodied regret I droop, tempering my once flaxen locks with the darkly hollowed hues of pain.
Setting my intention, I brace against the terminal vertigo of eons spent itinerant. Atop shaky legs I stand. My trailing red fingertips smear the curvature of the porcelain rail, evoking in the splintered veneer a newly crimson finish.
The famine of love has broken; I torpidly feel my way. Rise, I start. I circle once, twice, clocking the fading misery of the witching hours. Retreat, I must. On the floor below, the gushing red deluge dissipates into nihility. Repent, I have. The door stands open and defiant, aghast at the scene. Resurrected, I am.
Once upon a dream, I was in love. With plans so grand we’d run away, shave our scalps and warm each other; someday we would return. A dream it seems it must have been, for this unseemly scene was not redeemed. What now remains is in between, life and something else. What now remains is me. Alas the sun is long since set; nevertheless, I think fondly of its glow.
Speak the truth, even if your voice is trembling and barely audible. Even if at first it’s only you who hears. Truths that grow greater in quantity and magnitude inevitably force an audience.
All your life you've never seen a woman taken by the wind. Enchantress extraordinaire, Mother Music, Stevie Nicks. And although she may be referencing the sylph-like sorceress Rhiannon with this particular lyric, there is no question that the woman we really love to love is Ms Nicks herself. Well I do, at least. Needless to say, I near-on wet myself on hearing today's announcement of her forthcoming Australian tour. She's made magic with Ringo Starr, Tom Petty, and Rod Stewart, and there's that little old thing she had going with Buckingham, Fleetwood & McVee; her music has been emulated by acts ranging from the Smashing Pumpkins and Hole, to the Dixie Chicks and The Corrs, such is the breadth and appeal of her artistry. Ergo, I had to post a clip. Despite not being a Nicks' original, it's one of my favourites. A tad intense if you find the dialogue is hitting a little too close to home, but still all-time. *Sheryl Crow also rules. As always.
The woman could be you. A pair of long, thin arms hang limply at her sides, not knowing what to do. Not knowing when to move, where to go, how to feel. Idle arms are they, who have in turn given life to idle hands. Empty hands that might pass as things of beauty, if not for their profound uncertainty. By all accounts timid hands, meek and unimposing, yet not altogether boring. On the contrary; hers are hands that know too much, have been too exposed, too involved. Hands lacking not in wisdom, but in compassion. Closed to the world, fingers coiled around one another, clenched hungrily against a wrinkled palm. Delicate and diffident. Vacillating. Aquiver with ravenous fear.
