Reflecting

An eclectic sky, flashes of frightening lighting up the shed. From the midst of the stormy shrouds breaks an intense blackness, falling like a lava lamp. Separate yet inseparable from the ever increasing darkness. A feisty mist of fear spreads through everything, into our stomachs, curling us into foetuses, smaller, balls, rolling around the floor. Bouncing off each other.

The blackness, tactless, arachnids, immaculate, bursts into shards of fear, like glass, breaking through the windows, crying out in a deep feral rumbling. I gather the children to me and we hide beneath a table, eyes pressed shut.

Then slowly the world comes back into being and tiny vivid hands pull me out into the room and my eyes are drenched in fathomless colour. The glass pieces have shattered into vibrant blues, reds, yellows, burgundies, scarlets, and we turn to the TV where a bland blonde woman warns us of ink storms due to sweep the country this week.

�.

I push out my hand in confusion and feel warm familiar skin pressed close to mine. My spine curls in relief. The day that creeps from behind the curtains does not appeal. Maybe I will hide in bed forever.

Upside down from underneath the other end of the duvet we stretch out and press the button. Dots of black and white buzzing angrily and a foot appears and kicks it into clarity. And we giggle good morning to a ruby-lipped, rosy-cheeked, sparkly-eyed, broadly-grinning face who winks at us. We blink at it. We rub our eyes and, turning, fall into each others, and out of bed.

Alone, cross-legged, I gaze at the screen. Familiar faces, as though the politicians were sitting next to me, whispering soothing untruths into my ear. Hands on my knee; breath on my neck. Shifting into a day-dream I feel the imbalance of the world tugging on my not-right hand side. They listen, but do they ever hear?

�.

Weight binding his eyes to his feet he dances through the streets. Side-stepping and do-si-doeing in and out of the swarm of people; the endless varieties of faces blurring into no-one.

And winding towards him through the bodies wafts a little tune. A fiddling, riddling little man in a pixie hat balances on a rope tied to two lamp posts, his instrument tucked under his chin. And around him shine happy faces, radiant and transformed by the music; transformed from the monochrome crowd. The gentle skipping melody has the effect of a carpenter, the notes planing out the lines in their foreheads. Worries curl into round cheeks. The artist�s fingers smooth over their faces, pulling and tugging their mouths into flickering smiles. To themselves and at each other. A shared feeling of warmth moves the crowd closer together, arms and shoulders touching.

A warm summer evening drifts into his mind. Bouncing through the dunes and kicking up sand, excited in anticipation of a vast open sea. Where premature moon beams reflected in her eyes, reflecting on the water. And as they had reached the highest dune a black cloud hit the horizon, shattering the sun into fragments which burst angrily down onto the water. And he bent to kiss her forehead as she broke forward to join the battle, to push into the waves and release her passion. And further beyond this conflict lay something more; an acceptance, as the low sunlight leant gently back into the horizon and dusk stooped to shroud her in night.

�.

I put on my coat and sleepily trip down the steps into a gusty, blustery, busty woman who chides my clumsiness, bides my time. And as I tumble through the streets I stumble across a small man in a pixie hat slumped against a lamp post, cradling a broken violin. And beside him, hand on his shoulder, sits my other half and he looks up, surprised to see me, muttering something about a teenage boy and someone having a laugh. Couldn�t he see the change in their faces? He asks me.

I have to meet someone for lunch, I reply. And scurry away. Hunched over against the cold, hurrying and worrying: blind. To the people pirouetting around me. He turns back to the pixie man who reassuringly leans into him before standing up and handing him his violin. Take it, the man says. What use is it now? But the feeling of warmth hasn�t left and, instead, he takes the little man�s arm and leads him down the street, heaving chest, breathing: we can fix this.

�.

Breaking into the caf� I look around for the woman, my friend, who I haven�t seen in years. Fear lingers in my stomach. She sits to the left of the caf�, nondescript, her face only slightly more creased. And the increased indentations round her mouth serve only to make her smile more welcoming as she catches me hovering uncertainly by the door. Hello you, her lips whisper.

And in her face is a universe; a long-lost world. I follow the intonation of her voice like the notes of a childhood song and relax into the familiarity of it, involuntarily smiling as she does, frowning when she does; regressing into the comfort of knowing and being known.

My thoughts move to a soaked November evening, the stars cloaked in cloud, alone in my parent�s house. Some deep feeling had driven a younger me into the dark garden where I had spread out my raincoat and lain beneath the tall fir tree, rain weighing my clothes to the ground. And, drowning, I sang out. Lost in broken thoughts which scratched over and over through my mind. Like an old record. A discord, a discordant chord: flawed, bored. The raindrops on the caf� window look like dust. I wish I�d said what I was really thinking I wish I always said what I mean to say you always ask me what I�m thinking but it�s like a huge metal cushion is pressing down on my lungs and my mind empties and my lips dry up and I�m unable to say anything even the tiniest thing what I really want is not to feel sad all the time I want to feel happy and safe and alive and I want you to know you mean�

Catching my eye, matching my mood, a woman monotonously chews the leaves of her salad. Flavourless and bland. I stand and leave, weaving my way to the cake counter.
�.

The murky river swirls, twirling upwards to the darkening sky. Stretching to pull at the clouds which fall, spilling into the river; filling the evening with watery greyness. The little man beside him chuckles and sticks out his tongue. Pink, and his eyes twinkle. Musicians are the new peacemakers he says, a wide grin spreading to his eyes. Playing to people is like playing with people. You play with their emotions, their expressions. He smiles, you can make them dance, you can make them forget; following the notes and existing in nothing but sounds. Bringing fears tears years of worry and tiredness to the surface. Flowing down their cheeks and slipping away.

A humid damp smell rises from the ground. A small muddy boy with bruised knees flees to a fading jungle, trees skipping beneath his feet, tripping him up until he falls into a desert, vast grassland reaching far beyond his tiny body, I�m lost he sighs and cries out into a blackening shadow that reaches beyond his covers and hovers over the door, screaming, dreaming of being young.

�.


Later at home, sprawled together on the sofa we fall back into the TV, hearts preoccupied, minds heavy. His fingers entwined in my hair, like our bodies clumsily wrapped round each others. I play with my words to change the expression in his face, to break it into warmth and the soft sparkle in his eye moves in me like the dimple pushing into his cheek. And as I fade into the shade of it I feel his heart opening and fall into it. Falling into a universe of space. Space to play and explore more of each other. And when we turn back to the screen thousands of faces look right into us, and it�s clear. Our hearts open to them too, our bond reaching out and binding them together.

�.

And as his body accepts sleep his mind kicks out, it is a lack of the senses, but a lack of sense and what makes sense does not make sense and I sense an agreement in this eye. Your eye. It opens wider, deeper, a planet, a solar system, a universe, sensing the night in its birth�

Out of the tree come faces, carved into being by the music. Skipping through the air inside brightly coloured butterfly wings. Fragile and delicate. Like the sadness in your eyes. Drooping and dripping into intricate lines, twisting to the roots of the tree. The difference between a smile and a frown. Tucked into these grooves a million tiny caterpillars crawl, wriggling out into the sea, unfurling and curling into tentacles. They connect and suck together a thousand different countries, ten million different people. A collision: an explosion of inky blackness. Filling everything with sadness, darkness, sharpness.

Clarity.

The inky sea flutters into oceans filled with butterflies which, rising in a swarm of rainbow colour, fill the sky. We are imbalanced, a voice booms. People, countries, nature, stretching the world into an abstract oval. Bulging off the edge of the table. Bursting on the floor. A tiny child with moon-eyes gazes forlornly at a stern-looking man in a grey suit. Help? It questions. But he doesn�t hear. He turns round stirred by a warm smell of bread, and fades into a grey haired boy with an oversized tie. Why? He cries, indignant, stamping his feet. Stamping stomping stamping. A drum beat turns him upside down. The tiny child becomes a smile, all teeth and no lips. Drum beats, booming closer, become heart beats throbbing, bobbing. And jogging round and round comes sound after sound. A blind frown appears, absorbing all movement, all feeling. It takes out a broom and sweeps the tiny smile into a silent colourless world. Nibbling the wind and drinking the clouds. For eternity.