As The Days Go By

It seemed to me that my father had softened over the years, or perhaps it was just that I never knew him very well. But I did know that when he used to hit my mother he was not soft. His anger has dissolved now and I wonder if that will happen to me too, but I don't think I want to wait that long.

Now he is a two time divorcee with four boys and one girl; me, living in a complex of units in a town so small and far that I've forgotten the name. My father lines up at Crackerjack Chicken and Big Dad's pies for his meals and the thought makes me sad. If he were closer I'd invite him over, remind him what real food tasted like. He could only ever cook grilled cheese sandwiches, but they were the best, that I remember.

I don't know much about his life, only that it is small, and the same things must happen to him a lot, I get scared sometimes, that maybe that will be me in twenty years. Lining up at Crackerjack Chicken behind the young sheila who lived next door, two wives I'd had, five children I'd called my own. But I could never marry, or have children, so I know atleast, our lives will not be exactly the same in twenty years time.

I wish I were still young enough to ask my father silly questions, like what it was like being in the army, and what did he imagine his future to be like? Not like this I am sure. He has his kids atleast, but we don't talk much, him and I, what would we talk about? I think now, my father is beginning to look at me and realise what he has missed out on, he says he should visit more, slack he is, I'm too nice to pull him up on it, but it was true. I guess he decided that I was someone he wanted to know, and that scares me a little. What if I'm not who he thought I was? Or what if I turn out to be someone he doesn't like? Will he leave again, but not looking back this time?

I've never really been angry with my father, mostly I feel sorry for him. I think he has always loved my mother, but she has not always loved him, worst mistake of her life he was, that probably meant me too. But I am glad, that she did not love him back anymore, because for certain if she did, I would not be here now. I don't know where I would be, I don't know if I would be at all. All I know is that she was in trouble and she had to get out. I just hope that I am never in so much trouble that I have to get out.

I am not like mother nor father, but like someone who has grown up by themselves, and I look at them and remind myself that they are human, and we make mistakes more often than we get it right, and I just have to keep remembering that.

But I do hope my father finds someone who will look after him, so he can stop lining up at Crackerjack Chicken behind the young sheila who lives next door, because she's no good for him and neither is the food. My father is an honest man, he may not be the most exciting man in the world, but he is funny and honest and I'm proud of him for that. And maybe I am like him somehow too, funny and honest, atleast, I am trying really hard to be and that's something isn't it.

Storms

You told me to come here, to the edge of the world, and I never really figured out why. I came here to the edge of the world where the sky and the ocean blurred, one began but the other never ended, and I asked the questions burning on my mind.

I stand here knowing that no one who has come before me has ever questioned, they had always just accepted. I'm ready to find out if I'll fall or fly, you've taken me this far, and now it is time for me to let go, for you to let go, and let me find my fate.

I like to believe we end where we begin, and I began in the air, or was it the water? So here I am, facing my ending with so many questions, with so many footsteps towards the sun, cut through the air and above the water. My questions, my truths, on top of these cliffs, looking into the calm sea that people believe is me, but I feel the subtle wind shift through my hair and I know that is really me. The silent storm raging through a darkened sky, the one that no one ever saw coming.

So I try to say
Goodbye my friend
I'd like to leave you with something warm
But never have I been a blue calm sea
I have always been a storm.

Lovers And Friends

She was very presumptuous and I didn't really agree with that, but we were best friends, or more, so I forgave her. She said that I only saw things in black and white, but she only ever saw grey, and grey was the colour of my infidelity. Because grey was an unremarkable colour, was it even a colour at all? And by my grey infidelity I mean something that never happened.

There were nights with her that felt like highschool sleepovers. We'd stay up late talking, giggling, using a deck of cards to tell our fortune. Is Bec in love with x? Has Bec ever been in love with x? The cards never lied and those nights we laid our past and our future out in front of us and put a belief in it that was unwavering.

But she was more than my best friend, she was someone who knew me. Someone who would pull me up on my shortcomings, of which there were many. And she knew me in sensual ways that I can't really talk about here. She asked why I never wrote, why it was always about some other girl, and not her, and I guess I thought I didn't need to write about her, because she knew, she knew me. And maybe that's the thing, she stopped knowing me when I stopped letting her, and we became best friends that were strangers, strangers that shared the same bed, but strangers that had stopped sharing the same thoughts.

So I'm giving you back my thoughts because they've been gone for too long, and you might think that we are only best friends, but if you know me, and if you know my thoughts, then you will know the way I think about you, and it's not something I could ever say here.

I've Lost Myself Or Most Of Me

I'm chasing the back of you in a crowd, you are too far to call and too far to run after. So I try to find out if it's you by the way you walk. You have a very distinctive walk that always catches my eye, one that is determined, a woman on a mission. I guess one of the problems of being so observant is that I always see you coming but you never see me, and I take that personally. I look away from you, or who I believe to be you for a moment and you've disappeared. I can't seem to find where you have gone and I'm so busy looking that I almost miss the flirtatious smile from a passing highschool girl. This should make me smile but it makes me want to cry because I'm suffocating. I can't breathe here and you don't seem to understand that. You think that it's about you, but it's about me and it's about this place and the way it haunts me everytime I come here. But I can't take myself out of this place and neither can you, so I find a place within this place that haunts me and I stay there to catch my breath, I stay there until I can breathe again, until I can no longer think of seeing you.