Broken mind

I watch you, unabsorbent and weak, from where I lean on the wall. You're my daddy, that will never change. But I am teacher, sister, mother, stranger, little girl. Sometimes a carer that you do not trust. We go through the same routines, unpacking your bins of books and CDs. You try to name me and my sisters on the large family portrait. You think we are always that age and I make the mistake of upsetting you when you ask me. Inside I am always fourteen, maybe that's what you see. That you are always forty-one, every age, always. Moving between years from moment to moment. You used to be able to articulate, what it was like moving between two worlds; that you never knew which one you were going to be in. Things coming back to you slowly, like a figure appearing out of the steam engine mist, beginning to take shape and definition. The longer I stay, the more you remember it's me. You talk about Furness Grove and Stockport in the 1940s and 50s. You tell me about the Manchester Blitz, asking if I remember it. In the background, Perry Como sings about 'how lonely life can be'...'shadows follow me...' and i fee the familiar nweling in my eyes. 'What do you do with your clock money?'You suddenly ask 'Do you spend it all on icecream?' I smile and tell you no, I don't spend it on icecream. 'You told me someone at your school had a rifle.' 'Did I?' I ask you, untrimmed eyebrows raised. I don't like you to get scared or confused; anything to make you feel safer. You tell me it is probably an army barracks. I agree, suggesting some Christmas music. 'The tree looks nice.'I tell you, already back in the rain on Sherard Street, less than a decade since, finding warm decorations to go with the new pine furniture Ruth and I bought you for your flat in town. I can stilll smell the paint of those long hours, with aching arms, scrubbing and cleaning and painting. To make a palace fit for a king. I still hadn't quite got the curtain right, when it came to taking them down only months ago; filling my car again with your history. Locking the door on your independence. 'Ai! 'You nod 'But I don't like the tablets that come with it. I keep throwing them away.' 'You need to have your tablets.' I tell you, patting your flaky arm. 'They're for your heart and your diabetes and memory. The ladies here are asked by the doctor to keep your health up with those.' 'Ah, well maybe I've been misjudging them.' You concede. Have you let your mind break because it's easier? I feel my cheeks dampen, as I notice you've attempted the crossword I left out for you. It doesn't matter if the answers are right. And when you managed to phone me last night...for the first time in years, telling me you were waiting for your dad to pick you up from St. Josephs... I hoped it wasn't a metaphor. 'But you promised you would stay around for the Christmas period.' I reminded you. I'm so sorry for times when I haven't understood you, been grateful. I'm sorry I didn't want to go and watch Manchester City every Saturday... 'I didn't expect you to be so organised.' You tell me. 'I didn't really know what to expect.' I wonder what I've done, while I've been sitting here, with my hands on my coated lap, to seem so organised. I've grown up, as well as stayed young. I've changed and stayed the same. You make me feel like Alice in Wonderland. 'Well, I'm bored now. Can we go?' You decide, with a familair gruffness. You start pushing yourself out of your chair, pointing out all the things that are 'yours' in your room, that you want to take with you. 'Well, you promised to stay for Christmas remember?' I smile, raising my eyebrows again, parentally. 'You stay here so then I'll know where you are when I come back tomorrow.' I watch you carefully, for any hint of agitation. I feel bad for playing games with you like this. You smooth your Santa Claus beard and moustache, looking around in surprise. 'Oh, they let you stay here do they?' 'Oh, yes.'I state firmly. 'there's a change of clothes in your wardrobe and a bed here look.' I indicate where I've been sitting, leaning against the wall. 'Oh. Do we all get one of these?' 'Mmmmhmmm.' I assure you, standing and kissing your cool, bristly cheek. 'I shall see you here again tomorrow.' 'Did you say there was a wardrobe?' You ask, frowning, wanting to get things straight in your crumpled mind. I brush the hair and dandruff from your shoulders. 'Just behind your chair look, there. So you can change your clothes.' You start then. 'Change clothes? At my school you just wear what you turn up in.' 'Ah. No uniform then?' I pat your shoulders one last time, and hug you, remembering when I used to follow you around everywhere, watching you, a self-made electrician at work. You loved me playing the lead in that play in Crewe - The Electrician's Daughter. You kept patting the director on the back, with your puns and jokes. You nearly made him fall over. You were so tall. Larger than life. Now you're small, in your electronic armchair, that doesn't work. 'See you tomorrow. Love you.' The words choke in my throat. I'm trying to be brave Daddy. Hoping my words don't seem out of place, from a departing stranger. I slip out of the door, to try and catch one of the carers, to ask about the sty on your eye. 'Where did you say there was a bed? Across the hall?' You call. I point to the left of you. 'Just there, look. I'll see you tomorrow.' 'What time?' You ask, looking at your long defunct watch that you insist on wearing rather than the new one you lost. I know you don't want me to leave. 'About 10.' I say, deciding on the spot, I remind myself you're safe here, looked after. But, I feel the familiar guilt, like a cobweb I've walked into, as I leave your Oliver Twist, Willy Loman, Ebenezer Scrooge. I brush the sticky threads from my face, a spider's web of tragic heroes and happy endings. And as I fasten my seatbelt, warming the windscreen against the frost, I wonder...what would have happened had you gone to that trial, years before I was born, for Manchester United. If you hadn't blown them off for a date. I wondered if I'd have still turned up; if I'd have still been born. If I'd still appear, like a familiar figure from the mist, somewhere in your broken mind.

The rythm of yesterday catches me off guard. The same songs playing from the sound system, distracting me from conversation. Lost images glint at the peripheries of my vision, like fairies.
Bewitched are my feet, retracing their moves down memory's pain. My teenage self, flickering like a still burning flame, reflecting in broken hearted songs - not understanding the game.
"If only I knew then what I know now..." Brings me back to the present.
Rachel smells of Tommy Girl, it makes me think of my dad.
"...how different things might have been."
Decisions falter with the glass breaking sound of immature wisdom. Retrospect means the scars still show.
I feel my eyelid self-consciously twitch, smiling at my facade of adult-ness.
Richard Bach. Can you really meet your older self crossing the bending bridge of time? Visit and advice your younger self ?
I had imagined that. The me of now, looking back and reassuring the mixed up mess of yesterday. The drunken frolics, misguided moments, lonely heart craving for its soulmate. I used to imagine seeing myself, older, all accepting, all embracing, reaching out to the poetry writing school girl, staring out of the window, down at the older me in the schoolyard.

We move from the table we have been occupying, smiling at recognisable faces, stopping now and then as we reach the school yard...
I swear I see the ghost of a familiar face looking wide-eyed from a top window, overlooking the courtyard, just for a moment.
"Becky?" Rachel whispers, "Where've you gone?"
I smile, feeling the pulse of tomorrow thumping in my feet.

The houses sit, like new presents, neat and clean. Their quietness promises the falling sunset hues of vows, packaged memories, fresh beginnings...

I am a face peering out. The birdsong reflecting the orange, red of the sky, more distant now. The squeak of a chair and hum of computer suggest a flurry of tomorrow like a flock of wings waiting to take flight.

Noone can see me.

Evening beckons to a slower pace, a last check that all is ready for the light to find it in its rightful place. The minutes quicken, with the pulse of my heart.

Here, inside my box, like a cardboard doll, I wonder at my sometimes reddening cheeks, swollen tongue, embarrassed of its inarticulate jibes, stumbling footfalls, unsatisfactory mirror reflections...ill prepared moments of inadequacy. I replace them - with a sure, light step - a foxtrot of delights, a waltz of witicisms and a thought that when I awake from my toy slumber, and cut the invisible strings of yesterday - I will dance out of the very square playhouse and sing like the lark of it all.

moment

Her confident scales shimmer,

blinding,

in rainbow hue. A metallic perfection

in a haze of spray, a moment of light, leaping with all her might.

She does not see the cold, sharp talon; or hear the reeling excitement above.

A contented moment, not thought beyond.

Then the suddenness.

Her pierced slippery body in fight -

flapping and squealing,

jerking and shaking,

shuddering

in quick spasms of breath.

As the blankness comes, her eyes fixing down,

darkness descending,

she is vaguely aware of the sails -

of the whooping joy...

before she is thrown back -

confused, disorientated, scared.

Slipping back, below the surface

of her lost innocence.

The match sparks, lighting the next Act, we hush -

my fingers tense around his -no longer

pushing him away. No more lines rehearsed

or spoken,tracing letters on his back;

we chastise eachother -going over

the same lines, again and again and gain...

the next scene - he places the puzzle ring

on my finger,disentangling me

from repentant past, still scripted present;

and I place mine on his - not letting go.

As the music plays our sound track cues, we

play grown-ups; reinventing ourselves to

fit. Conform. Our playschool house, loving spouse:

always redrafting our rhyming couplet.

Home Time

No more looking back, wanting the wasted day to move at speed. No more wishing for wistful home time - feet out in the cold, pattering away like rain, to the car.

I'm home - the cloister corridors echo it. The tall, arched doorways and columned court yard passage open as I pass - recognising me. At last.

The day could not start too soon, nor last too long - the trodden stone stairs and history won't let go of me. They knew this day would come. that I would come. And here I am.

Smiling, from toe to static hair, floating along passageways, walking through walls.

I recite the sonnets, board and mortared; raise the aged scroll above my head in testimony to undulating journey, wavering faith. Reward. the gates have opened -breathe in the incense, the frankinsence and mirth - the old boys appaluse, eyes proud and approving as I sail into the harbour of the school; and finally lay anchor. Home time.