Amalgamation
I’m sitting on the train with you and I’m telling you about
my new job. You wouldn’t believe it, I tell you, I’ve fasted
for days and pledged my celibacy and still god is no where
nearer than he was before. I tell you about the children and
how they blow trees down like candles on a cake. I tell you
how, in the dark, I go and strip the fallen trunks of their bark
with my teeth. No one knocks on my door. I bless myself
with fading glowsticks. This is the bloody advent of my youth,
I tell you. You tell me to leave. That if I stay there too long
the music teacher’s love-slick clarinet will turn me into a deer.
I say maybe, but don’t worry about me, what about you?
Have you managed to find your missing cat? You tell me – you did
and that you slit her throat because attachment is the root cause
of suffering. I say – hey, there is nothing new under the sun. We
take out our bottles of milk and blow bubbles through the straws
because that is the only true word of zen we know. When we’re done
you pluck out a strand of my hair and floss with it. And what about love?
I ask and as you answer I stare at my reflection in the window. Well, you begin,
I think as long as we’re alive we suffer. And I say I love you but
I think it gets mistranslated along the way because you just say
I’m trying to find the Land of Nod. I ask you why and what and where
but I’ve stopped listening and I’m thinking about Christ on the cross and
dragons, and I’m looking at webs made visible by the frost as we slow
into a station. Someone interrupts you and asks if we know if this
train’s going to Meldreth. A voice calls out that this service has been cancelled.
And we respond with the strikes are a joke and that this country’s going to hell
in a handbasket.The train empties and as we wait you ask me if I’m going
to go to the Christmas party. In the end we have to get on different buses
and you call out Merry Christmas just as I shout hold on for dear life.
On the bus, I spit out a tooth it flutters moth-like in my cupped hands.
I think about the music teacher all the way back. When I next check
my phone I see you’ve asked me to sting myself with nettles
to see if it’ll promote lactation. I say, yeah sure that’s fine with me.
And this time you hear it. Or I think you do. I’ve been wrong before.