As you can track the winds in the flight of birds, so too do I trace the hand of god in your movements A maddeningly pure grace, simple and honest – made all the more enchanting by your very ignorance of it Your total commitment to the task at hand, the dedication as you go about your daily works, springs forth vitality in your wake Life, even, as obvious as that which shoots up from watered soil Radiant. Glowing.
Perhaps more men have stirred to honest prayer by the likes of your kind than by priest or sermon or the knowledge of certain death whose words are dimmed in your light
Honest prayer: supplications, enduring affirmations of joy
I don’t know if dissociation is the right word but in recent years I’ve found myself revisiting old memories and seeing my younger self not as myself, oddly, but more often as a child stranger or a younger sibling
Old wounds then unfold and tear again in surprising ways, catch me unawares in the most unsuspecting moments A line from some old film seen countless times before takes on new life and cuts me fresh, leaves me struggling not to weep for little me Some inoffensive tweet or rediscovered forgotten detail looses old thoughts
And then the big brother in me wants to ball up his fists and fight something, someone How could they do that to him? To that trusting child? To me How could she say that to him? How could he let that boy think that?
Arman once ran out with a cricket bat to fight a neighbour who too loudly argued with our mum on the street and I had to pull him away even as I, myself the hypocrite, kept a keen ear through the crowding aunties
I on the other hand once mused that the deaths of my parents would be sore days I could easily move on from – a hurtful truth to admit – but I would certainly have to die before all my siblings or God help the world that dared remain in their absence
And that same familial, brotherly instinct kicks in when I see small me Us with our wholly shared genetics and him without a big brother to protect him
And if only I could punch a hole through time just to whisper none of those things were his fault
the ghosts of my forebears hide in my bones, make them dense, live on in them they steel me with their collective will inherited
a hundred stern faces of strangers cold women, hard men of small stature and sharp features some dark, some milk. blue and green eyes amid them. horse men, mountain men, ganges men. conquerors, kings and princes. titled lords and judges.
esteemed people of character and repute
the hundred – no, thousand – faces flicker in disgust as they mount with every passing generation their cumulated weight ever increasing, as did their machinations agendas criss-crossing, too many voices at once vying for attention each straitjacketing another and grinding the whole almost to a halt frenzied static: a net movement of zero
inert but for their shared disappointments in how things turned out
I wrote over a hundred mediocre bits before my grandfather died just over three years ago. I wasn’t particularly close to him, but I think the piece I wrote in his memory in the days that followed his passing was my hands down best.
And since then I’ve managed to sputter out a meagre six.
It’s hard to shake the feeling that attempting any more poetry somehow trivialises him or his life and/or death. Or that I can encompass any topic as wholly or honestly as I felt I did with that piece. Or that any other topic will ever compare to such a man, who was – in his own way – a giant in his day. I find myself thinking about him more than I assumed I would, post-demise.
It’s strange. I wouldn’t have considered this greaving. But what else can it be? The man has complicated an entire artform for me in his wake.
Sadie released the tight grips with which she held onto the bottommost cereal shelf behind her. She had been sat, legs splayed, smeared across the floor and into the shelving for minutes that felt like hours. Her head turned to one side; her eyes glued to the other, to the boy who hovered in her periphery.
“You’ll be able to move soon. I’m sorry for that. I always am.”
The invisible pressure that trampled her
let up enough so she could breathe again. Sadie’s hands dropped to the floor
and she turned to face the floating boy. She pushed herself more upright and
tried to compose herself, a hundred thoughts running past her as she gasped
greedily for air.
“You say you know me.”
His feet daintily touched the floor one at a time. “In this moment in time, yes. Maybe better than anyone you’ve ever known.”
“And you’re not here to kill me.” Sadie
looked around her. The people in the aisle were frozen still. Or moving too
slowly to be perceptible. One woman was caught in the process of dropping a
soup tin from overhead. It still levitated above her eye-line.
“No. Just needed somebody to talk to.” The
boy blushed and looked away.
Sadie wiped her clammy hands on her jeans.
“Sure. We can talk. About what? Why me?”
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know why. Out of
all the people I’ve ever encountered… You’ve always been the easiest person to
talk to. Now, I mean. I’ve tried later and earlier. It never works the same.
Even when we’ve met before.”
Sadie got to her feet and looked at the
boy. “What’s your name kid? You some kind of time-travelling alien robot?”
“Something like that. My name is Ayo: it
means ‘joy’. And I’m the last – or only – of my kind.”
Sadie squat down until they were face to
face and held his hands. “I’m so sorry. What happened?”
“I don’t know. There’s no way to ever find
out. They just stopped existing. All of them. I go back and forwards but none
of them ever were any more. But I
remember them. I remember my parents. I don’t think I made all of them up in my
head. Or else how would I exist?”
Sadie tried to hide her mental gymnastics.
“You exist, Ayo. I can see you.” She looked into his eyes and squeezed his little
palms. “And I can feel your warm hands.”
Ayo looked at her like an adoring puppy,
waiting for her to say all the right things. Apparently again.
“How many times have we met? Ten? Twenty?”
“Hundreds. Maybe thousands. I don’t count.
You’re my best friend.” Ayo considered his next words. “We don’t talk about the
same thing.”
Sadie stood up too quick and paid for it
with a faint head. “Oh Jesus.” She walked up the aisle unsurely. And then down.
Up and down she paced. Thinking. All the while the little boy Ayo waited
silently. Expectantly. The woman in the aisle still stood under her tin of
soup. She’s stuck and doesn’t even know
it, Sadie thought. That’s me. “Ayo.
You can’t just keep me trapped here. It’s not right.“
“You’re not a prisoner. You live a full
life after this.” The boy seemed startled. “I don’t understand. You’ve never
reacted this way before here.” Perhaps he was telling the truth and this wasn’t
her prison, but only his sanctuary. If so she had shattered it.
Ayo seemed to grow taller before Sadie’s
eyes. His hair stood on end and his shoulders lifted. Sadie realised his heels
had come off the ground and he was beginning to float again. Higher and higher.
“What’s happening? Ayo?”
The air became heavier. The boy’s eyes
began to roll up as he spoke. “Something’s not right. I have to do it again.
I’ve got to run it back. You always say the right thing.”
Sadie reached out, through the thick air, grabbing
Ayo by his trouser pocket and pulling him back down to the floor. “No!” The
boy’s eyes returned to normal as Sadie shook him. “No more do-overs.”
Ayo’s dainty feet touched the floor one at
a time.
“Ayo. Listen to me. I know you’re lonely,
but you have to let this moment go. You can’t live in this safe memory over and
over. You have to move on.”
They both hugged each other wordlessly for
a time. Ayo cried into Sadie’s shoulder. And then he left.
“I’ve roamed the earth since the primordial gases settled. I watched as the first cell split in two. I’m the curse on men’s lips and yet reside in the lap of every gal. I have been called a saint and a god. The children of the Nile called me Bes for a time. I have been known as Eros and Valentine. My boy, I am a creature of love and death and the Lord of union and separation.”
“I come and go as I fancy. Arrogant speck! None hold dominion over me. Not the great hand in the dark nor the pull of its stars. Certainly not you. I could as easily pass eternity sifting through sand.”
abdulj. 