Structures unpick, ignore chores,
downtime, me-time
making time, ’tis Friday!

Structures unpick, ignore chores,
downtime, me-time
making time, ’tis Friday!
The world is a happy place, they say,
Dare to be confident –
with all you’ve undone & made
yours without permission.
I’ve emptied myself,
I’m now ready to regain
That which I had sworn
never to reclaim.
If only we’d met in another era Of flowers and perfumes When you were all garden, Not just narrow ways. Now suffocating, choking. Yet you rewired, changed me, When I left to return.
Forever imbued,
With the black & white
Of love and loss,
Our joint grief-
Those wounds inflicted,
Bruise perfected.
Fractions of gray sky,
Lazy waters scroll by.
A mother, her daughter,
Observe, smile, giggle,
Contrasting the solemn geography.
“People will always yearn for a simple solution to their complicated problems. It’s a lot easier to have faith in something you can’t see, can’t touch, can’t explain, and can’t change, rather than to have faith in something you actually can.”
And, “Physical suffering, he’d long ago learned, bonds people in a way that everyday life can’t.” Bang on.
The novel is wrought with violence, both internal and external and noise, that I heard, and shrunk from. Yet there are moments of pause, when I put the book down because I could take no more of the stark imageries that seem to streak the afterlife; dismembered limbs, blood-stained bandanas, eyes in various hues, skulls and ghouls and all that can make you tremble in your sleep. There is unsettling humour that lines the almost-400 page novel.