Saturday evening ephemera in my bedroom while drinking a light beer
(for V.)
I find the unification of my soul inside the
energy, air, food and sunlight of a cup of chai tea
and the poetry of Victor Wessels. The
man who was in my life for a brief period of
time, well I am writing a book about him, the
river in the dismissed leaf and the mental ward
at Provincial Hospital and his full metal jacket.
I was the brown eyed girl in the forest of his smile,
the alphabet stuck in his teeth and his anguished
winter skin that was so fluid as he folded me in the
short history of his arms. I know I shouldn’t be
doing that. Writing a book about him. Night falls
around me
sweetly. What happens to a broken woman? Memories
change. Memories can and will change you.
The visions of illness will not leave my transgressive
body. I wish I had told myself I was falling in love
with someone I couldn’t have when I met you. It is
Saturday night. I am sitting in the dark drinking a
light beer that I stole from the refrigerator. When
my baby sister comes home from Europe to spend
Christmas with us she spends time behind a closed
door in Zoom meetings. She is learning Rilke’s
Czech while I am trying to heal and get over you. All alone
I sit and contemplate my love for you, reading and
books, my nerves. You’re no longer here. I forget the reasons.
The light is frightening and the wind is soft. I am no
longer young and my sister moved to Europe. I just
have the belief of photons to keep me company. And dogs.
I’m someone else, not me anymore. I take pictures
that you, and Joseph Brodsky and Pablo Neruda will never see.
The woman who forgets all about me is my sister.
Across the valley she is as pale as milk, this raw honey of
a religious meditation, this daughter of a gun. The
room is lonely and I think of the flight and tenderness
that I found after my first nervous breakdown.
People are always forgetting all about me. Sister buys
me nice clothes. Sister visits friends in Moldova, in
Switzerland. Of course, with her Viking friends. Do
you think of our childhood, our parents or do you just
think of the Alps, the cold falling all around you, the
genius of the coelacanth or yourself? I suppose if
I were you, I would be dead to you too. The black sheep
of the family, the relapses. You never ask how I am, enquire after
my health. It’s snowing a little. It’s snowing on the
Eastern Cape mountains and I thought of you. Your
American ex-boyfriend. I pretend not to notice
now that we have nothing in common anymore.
Dead sunflowers grow out of my hair that felt
itchy against my skin. I thought my brother would
win prizes for integrity one day and minister to the
poor but he never did. I got a book published in Australia.
I whisper to myself that now I am successful.
The snowbird comes every winter. I bury
my champagne face in its glass veins. The snowbird goes
underground, and I follow. I am in seclusion.
I have covid. The nurse looking after me also
gets covid. I can’t sleep at night. I am frightened
of the dark. When I get out I am going to do
all the things I didn’t do before lockdown. I
will go out more. I will fall in love with my heart and
out of love with sparkling wine, vodka and orange juice
go down to the sea. I promise I will live more.
The man never used to tell me to shut up, dear
sister, like you, and every time I drink, I turn into an alcoholic.
Run with scissors like Botswana. Just like Bessie Head.
…..
Poem: Abigail George
Image: ennif pendahl on Unsplash