Tag: loss

A Bar of Soap

Another one inspired by ABL. Not sure why he had such an impact on me but he certainly has given me lots to write about! I last saw him on Gili Air in 2016 and it was after this I finally decided enough was enough and walked away. I remember quite vividly this soap incident and also remember thinking at the time how the anti-climax of what was hidden on the bottom of the soap really summed up the friendship/relationship.

Strange synchronicity; we holidayed on the very same isle
I was there with friends, you were solo you said with a smile.

You couldn’t find a room on Gili Air so you’d have to bunk up with me;
I should have said something sarky but was too full of glee.

So you stayed and I loved it but like the shells on the beach
You’d cut and then tear; let’s face it, you’re a leech.

You found me too gentle when I patched up your finger
And at the end of it all, when I hoped you would linger

You told me again you were happy just to be my old friend
But I craved you and felt rage that just wouldn’t mend.

One night, you went out, I wanted to feel you, to capture your scent
So I found your soap in the bathroom, saw your fingerprints feint.

I wanted to use it, trace marks on myself with soap trails of you;
I wanted to feel you, to smell you; pretend you wanted me too.

I’d always hoped our friendship would morph into something far more
But you’d always pulled and then pushed; kept my self-esteem on the floor.

Anticipating joy, I turned the soap over and found…
Clumps of sodden black hair in that great soapy mound.

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Ribbon

My voice has closed as the winter’s drawn in,
snapped shut like a thorny oyster
dying in self-imposed asphyxiation.

Outside it’s brooding, always dour
with sombre drab and dreary murk.
December mists bring biting frosts –
salvation for me is not coming.

The bedroom’s gloom is orange shot
by the street light bent double outside
and within these ruinous bleak four walls
heavy with the black dog panting I see

the only thing left from you to me:
a shot of lime green ribbon
that you tied to my suitcase
on the day that I left to come home.

It lies, supine, still wound round the handle,
slinky with the secret of your fingerprints
like a record showing that you used to care.
Sort of; in your own indecipherable way.

The only thing left is a strand of lime green
connecting the dots; a line from me to you.
There’s been no call, no message to say:
you’ve been thinking, you’re sorry,
you understand what you did.

I know I should hold it and pull full apart
its stubborn and cold-hearted knot.
Should throw it away,
like I threw everything else all away;
there’s nothing of use there no more.

It will spew micas of dust when I shake it,
when I come to untie its cruel core.
And I know there’ll be chills when I hold in my palm
the prints of your fingers, invisible traces
that held me so dearly, once more.

 

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He Says

He’d say:
I know we’re just friends but I need you right now
as his fingers traced patterns across my bemused brow.
He’d say:
I know we’ll have sex and I know we’ll be good
as he lay by my side like I knew that he would.
He’d say:
Let me take you away for your soon to be birthday,
We’ll go to Dalat, – would that be okay?
He’d say:
You mean the world to me; I’m going to miss you when you go,
You don’t need to worry; there’s no need to feel low.
He’d say:
Come stay with me at my place in Limoges,
I want to see you once more; let’s just see how this goes.

But you see, there’s a problem with all this and the problem was this:

He’d say:
She’s just a friend, I help her out just a bit
as he’d dive out the door for five minutes or more.
He’d say:
Those souvenirs you saw in her flat all last night?
Just presents for her kid, you don’t need worry about that.
He’d say:
I don’t find her attractive, interesting, desirable at all
I’m with you right now, what’s your problem with that?
He’d say:
So you think I would cheat?
I can’t believe you’d think that.

Yet here we all are in our own private misery –
6000 miles lying between us.
It’s no longer his voice that I hear; just the tap of his keys
as he writes and he says:
‘I can’t face you again; I’m cutting contact from now.’
So I guess now it’s out
I’m not needed by him
because he’s got work now to do:
to say things in her ear like he’d say to me,
so he can coax her back in cos he’s feeling lonely.

You see, he said all of that
but as I lie here alone,
I find myself saying words I don’t think I could mean:
‘say something to me – I’m loathing this dream’.

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On Learning of Duplicity. An Open Letter to Myself.

Dear –

Now that you’ve read his panicked revelatory message and the other woman’s stories that have contradicted all he ever told you; accept that your photos, his gifts and messages have taken on a whole new meaning. Take time to adjust to this new reality and accept that he took all your love and in return gave you back a handful of dust.

Nobody died. Nobody was maimed. Nobody bled. The trembling will stop, the panic and anxiety will subside and the white noise of revelations will cease and this too will turn to calm.

Accept that this is a terrible thing to have happened but, crucially, forgive yourself for trusting because there is no point to love without trust: the two hold hands.

Don’t think back over events which now have skewed and alternative meanings; those times when he had you both in the same room; the times when he fluently lied; so eloquently, so painlessly and the times when he made you think you were mad for ever suspecting him of being less than the good person he claims he wants to be.You will never see him again. You will go on to do wonderful things without him in your life.

Those memories you are torturing yourself with are nothing but neurons and synapses; little beats of electricity that mean nothing. They are pictures from a film that has simply ended and in time their colours will turn to monochrome before fading away completely. In time, his importance to you will shatter and you will realise you picked him out of a small crowd and gave him more attention than he ever deserved.

As Edna St. Vincent Millay said, ‘I shall forget you presently, my dear…I shall forget you…I would indeed that love were longer-lived.’ You fell in love with a fiction and so remember if you must things in this way: remember being spun in the water under a starry sky, remember the anticipation of weekends away, the kisses and secrets shared, the carefully created tokens of affection you made and gave him. But realise now that all of that has perished so place the remnants in the grave and bury it with your sympathy, your patience, your concern, your counsel and your love.

And if in those cold, long hours of the night, the spectre of his body and all he once told you and made you believe won’t fade away into dreams, think of Carl Sagan who noted that we all live out our lives on a mere dot, on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. All of this is just a blip in the timeline of all our lives and he deserves no more of your time and tears.

x

Posted on by nelsonandemma 0

Finality

Another milestone was reached today. When you break up with somebody significant, it doesn’t matter how many years go by; when you realise they’ve moved on properly (and in this case asked somebody else to marry them) it still has the power to sting. KB was someone I was with for 10 years – all through my twenties and nobody since (and I doubt ever) will be able to match how I felt about him. I wish them both well and hope one day I find somebody else too.

We were but saplings then,
tentatively growing together
with fragile leaves and soft sprouting buds;
slowly winding a disorderly history.

Ten years that should perhaps have been five
saw us gnarling and grating.
Me, I was a heavy weight pressing you down
on roots you weren’t ready to bear.

So you slashed us apart
and drifted elsewhere
but you always seemed to be in view;
a skyline tainted with my love for you

People have been and plucked at my boughs
but the fruits are so bitter they don’t stick around.
With each passing year I seem to wither and sag;
a little bit more, a little bit more.

An Old Garden Rose, she entwined herself easily,
softened you slowly,
glittered in the roots that I’d cracked so well
and around her broke forth those heady blooms
and you suddenly seemed to glimmer.

I found out today you will be together forever.
So the whorls in your imprint will be hers and not mine.
It seems only fair.
She brings you the colour I sapped away.

The orchard I stand in withers and dies,
drying up barren; it’s scorched and hopeless
hemmed in as it is by a raging rusting fence.
Wanted. Not wanted enough.

Posted on by nelsonandemma 0

Past my ‘Sell-by-Date’?

I was recently staying with my parents in the UK who were interested to know more about the man I had been seeing for the previous 5 months. I happily regaled them with whatever they wished to know and remember quite clearly one evening saying to them: ‘if this works out it would have been worth staying single for all these years as he’s great’. I think he broke it off a week later over Skype – life loves a bit of irony doesn’t she?

Apart from the usual discussion we had about why it wasn’t going to work (he hates his job and wants to move back to the states – fair enough) two things have stuck out about that afternoon and as the weeks go by it’s those things that have made me more and more irate; more so than being ditched. And those things are the following:

  1. In my distress and disappointment I asked him what he thought I was doing wrong to still be single after all this time. He told me that living in HCMC wasn’t going to help (I would agree that living in an area with a small ex-pat community, a large number of male travellers just wanting a shag and a huge proportion of Vietnamese men who are approximately 3 foot smaller than my giant 5’8 proportions doesn’t bode well). He continued by saying that sleeping with someone too early wasn’t a good idea either. Sorry, what?
  2. He is 30 and I am approaching 36. I was also told that he has time and he didn’t want to waste mine because (obviously) I am over the hump that is the grand old age of 35 hurtling towards middle aged 40 and my eggs are crying out for fertilising. Of course!

I suppose I ought to be comforted by the fact none of these things are actually about my personality, personal hygiene or intelligence…just plain old archaic and frankly irritating double standards and hypocrisy.

I find myself wondering as I wake up alone again as to when did my womb become an issue as to whether a man was willing to make a sacrifice and make the effort to try and stay with me or not?

Not to sound bitter but if Mother Nature had sat me down at the age of 18 and said the following I might have just given up before I began. I imagine the conversation would have gone something like this:

‘Now dear, here are the cards I intend to deal out. You will be on a long term relationship from 20-30 when everyone else is single and then be ditched just before you turn 30 when everyone else is starting to get engaged and/or buying a house together. This will be to free up time so you can then waste 3 years with a guy who cheats on you and likes to retain his powerful alpha male status by slapping your arse in public before you finally tell him to f-off and disappear to the Far East’. All this so that I can then be single for 3 years and ideally pretend I live in a nunnery and not have any sex during my self imposed years of singledom until some wonderful man decides that because I haven’t put out for a while I must be a decent sort that he shall date and not screw over? Brilliant.

Why is that when I met G and we slept together that night I didn’t judge him and was still happy to meet up again based on his personality but not so the other way around? He claimed that this wasn’t the case regarding ‘us’ but just from his experience back in Canada but he was still a ‘thing’ he brought up. We met randomly on a night out when I was feeling tiddly, reckless and just wanted some fun. How was I to know that we were going to hit it off? Who goes out on a night out, meets someone and takes time to think  ‘hmmmm….if I want this one to be my partner, I shall keep my french knickers on regardless of the fact I haven’t had any attention for months and feel like a wizened, invisible and ugly spinster most of the time while my coupled up partners get to have hugs, kisses and sex whenever and wherever they want. I know! I shall play the game and hopefully he will call me, date me and put me out of my misery?’ Maybe some people do but I thought the whole point of feminism was to give me a choice in the matter so that even if I wanted my cock and eat it, I could.

I was surprised and disappointed (again) recently to learn that a good male friend of mine whom I respect  (he is a very intelligent senior leader) who started seeing a woman a few months back felt that he went off his latest squeeze when they slept together on the first night…the chase was gone.

Seriously? Is this seriously something I have to think about? At the age of 36? In 2015? I still have to play stupid games to find a partner and deny myself basic human pleasures? For a while back there I decided to purposely not play games feeling that if a guy was like that he wasn’t the guy for me but as I enter my 3rd year as a singleton while all around me are seemingly engaged, pregnant or otherwise involved…I am starting to want to give up and just join in with the charade and be as false as the guys want me to be.

Just to add insult to injury, when G ditched me I decided that I was going to fulfil all those other ambitions I have seeing as clearly love in the family way just isn’t happening right now. I looked into MA’s and charitable organisations I would like to work for. I was met with websites that actually said  ‘open to all those who are aged 35 and under’. I could have cried. So men don’t want me because I am 36 and neither do the charities I want to work for. So my unused shrivelled up eggs and womb really do define who I am now and not my intelligence, work experience, determination…in fact all those other facets that make me who I am.

Why not tattoo across my forehead ‘I am 36 and past it – only those with children and/or aged 40+ may apply to be my partner; job optional’. Oh but I can’t because then I’d be accused of being a Feminazi or some other ridiculous term.

I’ll go now and hug my cat whilst tightening the screws on my chastity belt lest I remain forever the ‘spinster’.

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A Farewell to Friendship

So much is made of romantic relationships and how to deal with the unsettling grief and sorrow that comes along when they break down. But what of friendships? What do you do when you realise someone you were close to no longer feels happy about being friends with you? What are the rules and where is the guidance for that kind of confusion, guilt and distress? It feels like unchartered territory.

I came across the following article today when I was tinkering with my poem. Not only is it bang on topic but the title’s reference to Vietnam was scarily attuned to what’s been happening these last few months.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-doyle-palmer-/a-friend-is-someone-who-likes-you_b_3488081.html

We will return the books we once borrowed,
and sports bra memories of runs side by side.

Stuff them in the pigeon holes that
represent our silent communication.

We will take down the photos
and tuck them somewhere safe

or tear them up and feed them
to the bin beneath the kitchen sink.

We will absently use the gifts we gave one another
feathered pens, books and twee camera cases from Japan,

purposely forgetting who wrapped them carefully
in pink paper and in crepe.

We will delete the emails and messages
and not share our updated skype addresses

to keep secret our new contact details
in recognition of what we couldn’t resolve.

We will sit at opposing ends
of tables at social functions

in the theatre on the last day of work
we will try to avoid each other’s eyes

as we part ways in public.
We can try to erase all those years of friendship but

your email address will still come up when I log on
and I will still have flashes of you looping your arm through mine.

I will stop myself from visiting you across the corridor
to share my news and trivia.

Like a needle and a thread
we sewed a tempestuous history:
the glorious glittering colours

and then the later skies of bruising black.

We will continue to chew away

at the tapestry of our friendship.

Gnawing away at the pictures;

unravelling it, unravelling it.

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Lessons

You said that old cliché as we waited for our bus to Vientiane:

‘If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours’

So I let you go.

You didn’t come back.

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Tides 

(with a little bit of a nod to Anne Sexton)
I have always been there, my friend.
A monument of black rock draped in weed,
armed with sharp gnarly edges:
11149165_10206041370090165_1099411680_nscratchy and easy to graze.

I’ve always been there, my friend.
I’ve had many visitors come for a moment:
The one that wanted to grieve on me;
The doctor whose fingers traced a trail in the cracks;
Pebbles from Poland that cemented the fractures.
(I really did think that the pebbles would stay –
until the day they were dashed and crumbled away.)

I’ve always been there, my friend.
Long before the tide dropped you sudden alongside.
You’ve stuck around longer than most.

But now I find that you’re edging away
as I stay fixed and unmoving.
Sometimes you edge a bit backwards
but that’s only when the moon is still high.

I know that the time is fast coming
(I’ve always known it would happen)
but in low tides I find myself thinking:
Was I just a convenient shady location?
An anchor in strange, stormy waters?
Too dull really to be of benefit
when there is so much more that delights you much better.

I’ll always be here, my friendrock
But I guess I will have to let you go.
And I’ll watch as you drift far, far away.

But I’ll be here.
Always here.
A black rock covered in weed and the brine.

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