(The river is watercolour, and I wish you could see how the colours blend in summer
Through the light rain I can’t bear to hear the whispers of the city... I just look into the water It’s transluscent like your skin, blue as your veins. It moves at lightening speed in this rain.
I want you to come and see... but they can barely leave your curtains open for fear you’ll catch something from the light, the air. Your delicate complexion would only be tarnished.
I want to see you here in this painting but you seem so far from everything now, how am I meant to find you when now everything, everything I do feels like falling. )
The river is so gentle this time of year when the rain falls like feathers and fills it right up to the banks. It’s a water colour painting, all pale green and blue and as I sit on the bank it reminds me of you; your transparent skin, your pale green eyes and blue veins visible...
You are paint with too much water in it, now. Diluted, wasting...There’s a swan pecking at crumbs on the bench where you should be sitting, next to me. Did you know a swan can break your arm? Not that there’s much of you left to break now. You can barely leave your bed, without summoning fatigue to gnaw on your bones.
It’s hard to sit knowing that however hard I grip the bench it won’t bring anything back and knowing that I can never hug you as tightly as I’m clutching the wood because you are made of glass now.
The trees are throwing their leaves off in sudden gusts and they flail in the air so the world looks like fire. Their flamebraches flickering menacingly. It has an energy that you will never feel again, neither in your bones nor beating against your skin.
You are protected now. Like signets beneath their mother’s wing. You feel no wind nor rain, nor sunshine, no ecstacy in your veins. Everything is white... Artificially dyed flowers stand ridgid at the foot of your bed. I know they bring you no comfort.
A storm is coming. The swans retreat to their shelters, the people trail off into the distance, their faces hidden by dripping umbrellas. The trees tear off all of their leaves in fiery rage until they dance furiously in the naked wind. They are angry because you are not here to dance with them. ******* you, they hate you for it. For lying there, tormented and tired as the wind screams that ‘LIFE GOES ON AND ON without you.’
I stay on the bench, immobile. I am soaked right through to my lungs, feel rain drops running down the ladders of my ribs. I look like I have just crawled from the river, as leaves stick to my skin. I grip the wood tightly still.
Once it was sunny. It was bright, cloudless and you stood here next to the bench. You laughed at how the swans always looked so angry, like ballet dancers concentrating too hard. The trees had all their fresh young leaves, wrapped in their velvet coats.
The swans don’t look angry today, just sad, brow beaten. Their beaks point down as they huddle from the cold.
I hate you for not being here.
I let go of the bench. The storm rages.
I dive head first into the dashing water. It is deeper than usual but still shallow. I keep my head beneath the stirring water for as long as I can. I feel the cold rush against my skin, filter through my clothes and encase me in it’s breath. The air inside me screams to be released, threatening to burst through my back like wings.
I broke the already shattering surface and hauled my numb body onto the bank.
I felt then, as I lay on the soaking ground, that I knew you were never coming here or anywhere else you loved ever again. I thought I could feel your ghost in my hands, in my throat. Slipping awa.
The next day, the day you sat up and the doctors said you were a miracle, the day the nurse took away all the ugly flowers, the trees by the river had never stood so still, so wonderfully still.
