Siobhan Knox
Words and bodies in motion

Stardust

By on November 19, 2013

A heartbeat. One heartbeat. Two heartbeats.
Two beats of hearts, ragged sobbing breathing and the weight of her,
falling onto me, but not crushing me, because I can hold her strong
this time

like some kind of pillar,
this time
like a beacon of strength
this time.
This time I’m not tiny
this time my mind does not unwind
unravel down her path of oblivion in an inescapable rush of visceral…no.
This time my umbilical cord doesn’t feed her pain through me.

At least….not all the way through me. Don’t get me wrong.

It still aches just as real as waking up and slowly remembering they’re not coming back.
It aches just as real as waking up and slowly recalling that you’ve fucked it up…for good this time.
It aches just as real and probably worse than that eternal ache in the pit of your belly we don’t understand but we like to call lonely…but I mean the difference is…

…this time it doesn’t break me.

And now, now, now hush now, now, now. Hush now and rockaby and sobs and sobs and sobs and never ending choking tears coming streaming out of you, and behind you a sea of grey, patchwork,unfinished projects, photos of your proudest moments of me and that card that simply says ‘Love, Dream, Create’

Mummy…we’ve been manifesting maggots
Wake dreaming in the lands of the living, sleep walking through the sands of the dead.
I’ve been so scared of the end of you
and so scared that I think about it more and more each day and thinking about the end of you, my, my one, my mummy, you she stardust, golden.

You she, a world of you. You are. You be. You.
You are safety to me.
You are the warmth, wet, wonder.
You the one who unknotted my hair and sang to me.
You with your blonde grey hair, leather jacket and flowing skirts for me to hide my head in.

You who packed cold starchy spaghetti in a bag for me, both eating ravenously in dusky fields by campfires.
You…who taught me how to write poetry with my eyes and reach out with my hands.
You were never afraid to do the right thing.
You were never a coward.

You, stardust.
You dancing round a tree, playing harmonica.
You trying to see me, get me and break the city child OUT of me and make me understand mountains.
You, you are my moon, my, my my light my moon.

You’ll never truly be able to leave me. I know this. Nothing can take you away. You are eternal.
And I meant it today, when I told you to remember I still needed you.

Remember how you used to see yourself
before your vision grew dim
your version of reality twisted by him
obscured and blurry round the edges.

Don’t become one with these grey walls fading,
crumpling up round the edges….a human disintegrating,
orange alarms in every room with nice ambulance men on the other end waiting to carry you off.

Eaten smothered alive by four walls so oppressive you forgot what a real hug is like
“I feel like this is my jail cell, but I can’t even pace” you said to me, later, while I held your hand
I want to jail break you. You’ve always wanted someone to save you. We all do.

You know that eternal ache in the pit of your stomach that we don’t even understand but we like to call lonely?
Yeah-  the reason we don’t understand is because how can we POSSIBLY understand the perpetual desperation of a lonesome GOD stranded in the universe hopelessly creating versions of themselves -of ourselves – all trying to trick each other into NOT FEELING THAT ACHE.

The wizard is just an old, foolish man. Sometimes we can never go home again. Or sometimes we remember that we were

just
always
here.
Mummy you are stardust. I will make you see it again.

Posted in: Poems

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