Surrender

I have thoughts strung across many rooms and endless restless looping 
Words driving me up the walls and suddenly I am crawling on all fours across the ceiling and leaving paw prints
A demented feral thing that cannot sit still until its eyes befall a screen
The dark black box of a million sounds and a hundred thousand shrieks
I’m turning fast and letting it out like a tire’s sharp release of
Quick hot air and bursting brimming painful please just 
Drop the damned thing
Run outside and 
Tire yourself out you are not an animal in pursuit remind 
Your fibres of what is real and how the wind feels let
The hum of background life become silence interrupted
Only by the quick wings of a sparrow birds and bees and breathe!
Breathe
You cannot make haste of process 
No matter how fast your little legs run you from one thing to another
There is only so much fighting left fighting in your lungs fighting in your chest fighting
For another breath before the next word slips out and snaps
Elastic band spring back 
Hold tight closed fist gripped hard nails and dry eyes
White knuckled white teeth bearing down 
Grinning through it all and now
I feel myself burning but not brightly 
Just fire 

April! Small sprouting leaves! Once naked, twisting branches now dusted green! With envy! Weeds growing from all corners. A hollow tree trunk to fill with secrets. Bluebells scattered on crooked tombstones. “In Loving Memory of” chipped away by time. Slow-moving dust caught in streams of light. Irritated skin that refuses to heal. The rapid peddling of a duckling’s feet, the drumming of its tiny heart. Beating for the first time. Fast, fearful, but so alive.

Put your hands in the cold river, paint with your fingers. Write with fumbling words, incomplete sentences. Smudge the still-wet ink before anything settles, to honour inevitable mistake. Hold the book of memories in your lap to feel its weight. Hand it to your teenage self. Ask them to read it to you. Ghosts can pass through walls, it is of no use locking the door. Pick wildflowers for your friends, for your home, for the reminder of perseverance. Wrap your arms around yourself, until they feel like what you’re searching for. However long it takes. Soften the parts you’ve learnt to hold stiff. Find a way in through your bones askew. Walk towards fear as it bares its teeth. Stop coiling yourself into familiar shapes. Stop assuming rigidity will keep you safe. Let yourself be seen in unflattering light. Let yourself be held. Surrender.

You send photos of your day as if they were love notes, wondering if one day timing might be on your side. You kiss a man with kind eyes in a dimly-lit bar. You run your hands through a friend’s dark hair, trying to soothe an anxious heart. You watch crows in the park hop through tall grass. You inhale incense smoke as if it could cleanse you from the inside out. You draw trees to practice patience. You scribble whilst walking. You bite off more than you can chew. You lie on your back, letting your spine slowly drop into the ground. You smile at the barefoot lady who walks along the river path. She smiles too. You speak burning questions to the wind, as if it might carry one to its recipient. As if they might ever answer back. You keep trying to find tenderness in every possible corner. You keep trying.