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Written on 15 May 2013

Today my new day job looked at my heart and slavered.

 

I wanted employment that would not stalk me home. And yet, here I am, in a corner, writing about it, my organs scrunched up.

 

These surroundings are beautiful. I am in my conservatory. Over there blinding sunlight drains from the cupped edges of clouds. The air is spicy with smoke from a bonfire; wood ash drifts like cherry blossom. A robin sings. The trees are motionless, reaching out from a horizon-blue sky. Physically I am purged, drying out as I am in the wake of a flu that swept through me like a tempest. And when I drive into town, through tunnels of glistening leaves, I can see that this evening the world is alive.

 

And yet I remember that feeling, when, as I inhaled, everything tightened and then, like a broken mirror,

 

popped into shards,

 

each one rushing towards my heart. And I remember how similar pulses of pain would often come whenever my old job took another bite from my insides.

And so, this time, it takes over a day for me to feel safe.

 

But now it is a day later; and my job is once more grazing on greener things, life whose fruit is freely given so that all may grow.

 

Maybe it was my fault, with this new job; maybe I led it on. Maybe past trauma has made me so tender that even a look from this job leaves a mark.

But I'm watching it.