Monday 18 July 2016

The First Day - Stamping the Memory


I drive away and leave him in the home,
someone else undressing him so he can have a rest
in his new hotel-like room
even though we have only recently arrived.

  I turn the key in the front door. 
I feel stunned and slow in my own house
these first few moments 
as if I have dropped something boulder-like.

I drag the cumbersome green canvas umbrella out of the shed
and sit in the circle of shade it makes on the patio.
I sit for a long time gazing into the dazzling heat of the garden.
I don't know what to think
how to feel
without the great tight scaffolding
of care that usually 
keeps me tidily in place.

So I pour fizzy water over a clump of ice cubes,
 and read the last chapters of my sad book
  keeping my toes out of the sun,
and whizz up a garlicky pungent salsa verde 
and splatter it across my left -overs salad
and eat it 
as if I'd never tasted a salad before.

Then I creep into bed
and sleep for hours and hours.
the obliterating sleep of the heart wounded
and the drunk.
Till  the burning sun filtering through the blinds onto my legs
and the noise of  our neighbours arguing about their boiler
ping pongs through the open window
and wakes me.

I can't shake  off this unfamiliar oddness of not doing all the things I usually do
at this time of the day.

So much later I put a salmon steak under the grill
and Elvis on the CD player
and I let my body remember those moves
which aren't bending and wiping
which aren't lifting arms up or pulling
pants down
or jumpers off
or stretching for the seat belt 
or  towel drying feet.

My body remembering to dance
just for me
my feet bare
with their soles dirty
stamping the memory of some old forgotten  rhythm
dormant inside me
out onto the hardness 
of the kitchen floor.





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