Another attempt at drawing some ink, some sound from this winged whiteness. Extracting black blood vital fluid from the soul and she is barely awake from the ominous routine of her city day. She is full, full to the brim of a milky white agony, like a metallic cow that cannot be milked. She speaks in whispers in her head, obscure radio signals. There is no present, the present collapses between her gaze and an underground train approaching, the present is lost some Monday morning in the warmth of a blanket in the sand of sleep.
I am extending my greetings to all listeners on the line, a couple of crooks who are computing dreams with memories. Welcome to this warm night, my voice spills into the blackness like dark wine. The glass you drink from is cold, but the drink is comforting. Rotating around the outskirts of London, projecting an invisible body on the moving city, a voice to an eye. I blow these puffs of thought into the air, they dissolve within a few seconds and the signal is not that good between where you are and where I am
She thinks of her lover in the night, her mind fills with an unbearable loneliness. The ravens of despair are comforting creatures, or maybe she is losing it for good. She breathes her words into the night, scared of uttering them, she sends out signals unreceiving.
I imagine you in your bed. Or perhaps, at this time you are talking to your pals you see after work. Yes. I am talking to the city, to no one in particular, to everyone but myself. Yes, good. If only I could retrasmit my voice to my ears so as to hear someone talk to me. A familiar voice? Bounds Green to Barons Court, no one listens. I have filled my stomach to the point of rupture and yet I am still empty, carrying the belly of the city under my dress. I push people in the underground, I look at children with spite and anger. I come to a desperate conclusion between Covent Garden and Leicester Square but then I get off the train and lose my train of thought.
All is calm now. The trees, whispering, from her village. Summer sunset tinted grass, playing. The years weigh a tonne of steel and there is no passage to head back, no backward-exit. Except she can still see them, picture them, water them in her mind, the flowers, in her memory. She paints the scene in her head as she rests her head on the plastic divider in the carriage. It is cold like early morning dew and something smells like the past as she is held by a red signal between two stations.
Hear me out if you wish – the music I heard touched me so much, in that auditorium, that I felt the presence of sadness sit and let my head on her lap. That’s what I needed. And as the city sleeps I murmur.
Comments