good weather, good mood

The sun shines still, and I drove home topless, my hair in my eyes and up my nose with the breeze from the cars movement - it wasn't quite bumper to bumper all the way but there were certainly a lot of people leaving early to make the most of the pleasant evening sun.
I was kicking myself as I drove to work this morning, during March I passed a pylon stub, and pieces of pylon littered on the ground ready for building, and I promised myself I would stop and take some pictures for Parmanu, but I never got around to it, and now the pylon is up and ordinary.
I did make the detour today to see the blasted tree, and can report that it is indeed alive, with caterpillar green leaves perching on top of the horizontal frame like a bad toupee, so it's not a particularly good symbol or metaphor for heartache any longer. I still feel strangely calm, indefinite about that topic at the moment, the temptation is still there, to beg and abase myself if only things could go back (to what, I don't question right now); and I know it grows with the evening. But I am coping, I think.

blasted

blasted but beautiful still

in its way, most days

I drive right by

but I stopped this morning,

I wanted to see

if it still lived

with its heart splintered so

Scars

eyes flashing in the mirror, overhead halogen.
scars, skin not shining but reflective.
as scars should be.

Nil by mouth...

It is as if my lips have been sewn together, each time I want to communicate with you I am pulling on the stitches, the muscles around my mouth twitch now in anticipation of the tearing pain; if I carry on I will have short stubby whiskers as the knots come loose.
I can't ask even "how are you?" because my words are so potent, we are so poised over the precipice that to even make polite conversation will start us off on that luge-track again. 
I would prefer my words to be a gently bubbling warm jacuzzi, something you would feel both exciting and comfortable; but it seems I am instead a black run, exhilarating but fraught with the danger of crashing out, and in any case there is a sharply defined end. 
I would like to be a spicy Merlot, full bodied and tangy, to be anticipated and savoured each time the bottle is broached, there is a ceremony to it's opening.
But it seems I must be a cheap blended whisky, my taste is harsh but acquired, as the patina of adulthood is acquired and sometimes I was just what you needed to get pissed, to blot out any sorrows and be gladly uplifted by the glamorous falseness of "having fun" and I wonder how you are drowning your sorrows now?
And perhaps it is better that my mouth is forcibly closed, who knows what I would pour into it, and then what would pour out?

No tomorrow

Now he will not say even "Catch you tomorrow," but only that it is best we don't talk.  My heedless optimism in complaining about being switched off for a short time has been well and truly slapped down.
The trust that we can talk through things was broken, apparently by one flippant comment followed by a one word answer.  And even as I typed "whatever" I hated that I said it, such a cliché and now it will be accompanied by the sonorous knell of a relationship falling apart at long last.
This time he says we should not reply to each other, and that time will heal the pain, but he doesn't know how tightly I can cling onto it.
He says he hope things will go well for me, and he means that.  But if he has no intention of talking to me again he will never know how things are with me, so he cannot have any hope of it really.  He means he hopes I will leave him alone.

March (a winter war)

Marching through the emptied border regions
All is quiet, although I sense hidden watchers
reviewing me, checking I mean no harm as I
cross the battered and bloodied earth.
Here in the Marches the shortest month draws to its close.

Maybe the tendrils of new plant life that I tramp past will stay
above the ground now that the snow is faded and the fighting has stopped?
Remembering my brother who gave up his life in the last battle, blood flowed over this cold and sodden ground.
Crops this year will be lush, giving us Borderers a little something back;
hope though, as March nears will we get hope back?


A play on the three meanings of March:  the month, to walk purposefully; a disputed border region

Excision

I had decided I wanted to cut hope out of my heart, but thinking about it I was barking up the wrong tree, I needed a different kind of surgical procedure; what I really need is to burn out a selected few synaptic connections from my brain. 
A good dose of ECT would be just the trick if it could be precision wielded, to pinch out the pesky neurons and leave me with the ones that help me eat, speak and think, except for thoughts down those pathways of no return.
The immediacy and simple logic of the short term impulse pathway gets me, if X then Y; and I don't stop to question "Yeah, but why X anyway?" 
And really the problem starts way back with A; if A then B, then C, and before I know it my thoughts have skidded on down to X on the same slippery luge track as before. 
Even adopting another alphabet, lets say the Macedonian Cyrillic one which I study on the wall chart each time I go to the toilet in my friends house; with its 31 letters I am only delaying the inevitable with its extra "Zh" and "Lj".
What I need is to stop setting foot on the slope that starts with talking to you "as a friend" and always always ends up on the curving, swerving dropping path, adrenalin rushing and emotions flowing, for at the end of that slope I am again left hoping with my heart in my mouth as it tries to climb up to hijack my brain.


The last paragraph originally read the following, but was improved with feedback from the guys over at 6S:-
What I need to is stop setting foot on the slope that starts with talking to you "as a friend" and always always ends up on the curving, swerving dropping path, and at the end I am left hoping with my heart in my mouth, adrenalin rushing and emotions flowing; knowing that you will walk away from me again.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

I don't know her name.
Filtered through him I have random snippets of information about her, I know she has three kidneys and is several years younger than I am, I know where her parents live, that her sister has twins that went to the psychologist almost before they went to school.
I know that it is one year since she had to have her wisdom teeth out in hospital, because it shattered our plans to meet, paint the town red and fall into bed; this year, this weekend he goes to the hotel with her instead.
I know she is six foot tall, a better match for him there than I am, although it was someone else that told me this, explaining the day after the birth why their newborn girl was such a "long" baby.
He told me that she never gives him blow-jobs, after her first attempt at it many years ago went wrong; now a wicked joke between us that you could be a spit, swallow or snort type of girl. 
He told me so, but of all the things he told me I wonder if this last is true?

Crawl space

don't give up the day job...  well, actually, you probably should, it's not like you can manage that either, is it?  you might tell yourself it's just an insane workload and no-one could manage it but you know better really don't you? and you thought you could channel the shavings of energy you had left over into something else, something creative? well now you've been judged in that different arena and what a surprise you are still found wanting.  you are so slow, when will you realise that it really doesn't matter how hard you try?

Faith in logic

I thought men were supposed to be the logical ones, able to think without all that fuzz of emotion that, as a member of the weaker sex, I am obviously so prone too.  I asked him "What criteria are you using to judge if your marriage is working?"
He couldn't answer me, he told me that he hadn't thought of it as a "project to manage", slightly huffily. After a bit of scrabbling about, he said that he couldn't afford for it not to work, thinking I would take this at face value and think about the financial costs.
I knew he was hiding his blind faith from me, his vision of what a good family should be; he wants the chance of being "a good father", and proving himself a better man than his own Dad.
It is one more chance I have given him.

The Puddle

Several minutes later, she was still standing in the same spot, staring at where his living body had been.  Red pooled on the floor, almost too bright to be natural.  It was shocking arterial red pink, especially against the grey tiles of the kitchen floor.  She could see the blood run across her palm, watched the hypnotic cycle of each drop growing, swelling and pushing against the meniscus holding it back, and then falling down under it's weight; the track across the heel of her hand flaccidly waiting to be refilled.  Her blood looked dull when it fell into the puddle of raspberry cordial at her feet.  Glass shards from the broken tumbler, she welcomed the pain as a change from the dullness when he was not there.