Footsteps

You were strange.

I didn’t know you. I grew up fascinated by you almost. The way a child is fascinated by the glistening trail of slime that a snail leaves behind. With apprehensive curiosity. Or maybe the way a dog is fascinated by a burning fire cracker spinning on the ground. With fearful longing.

Your skin was speckled and dotted with grey spots. You didn’t even have to have your arms hanging by your side for them to be covered with raised veins.

Did you know, sometimes when you slept, I used to sneak into your room and touch your skin. My tiny heart would be thumping in my throat, my eyes would be wide like the golf balls. I would tip toe in by myself, none of the others dared join me, I would fix my eyes on you and approach. You weren’t even peaceful in your sleep. Heavy, laborious breathing. It almost rivalled the steady drone of the AC.
I’d walk up to you and touch the veins on your arms, pressing them down gently and watching them rise back up. Your skin was so soft. I didn’t understand how it was so soft when it looked so scaly.

Sometimes when I looked at you I felt like crying. You were so lonely, I knew. My parents, my cousin’s parents – your children – were always trying to make you happy. They brought you your favourite foods and they talked to you about their lives and they brought old friends to visit you. But even though you smiled politely back, your eyes were still heavy and full.

I wonder if you remembered me. All those grandchildren running everywhere, how could you know the difference? But I always felt connected to you.

Shall I tell you what I had wanted? Your liquid eyes were always so sad, their colour lightening over time. I wanted to hug you. To poke you and see if you’d react to me and say, ‘You are my favourite grandchild’ and have your eyes fill up with happiness and colour as you gathered me in your arms.

Did you know that?
I think you did.

My mum told me you were so quiet because you missed grandmother. Is that true? I suppose it must be. It must be her you carried in your eyes, and her in your plodding footsteps, and her in your puffs of breath.

Yesterday, I divorced my husband. He said he didn’t love me anymore. We’ve been separated for a few months now, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
But I am.

I don’t know why, but it made me think of you.

These past few months, when I’ve been happy – which isn’t a rarity, in general I suppose I’m quite a happy person – I feel like there is a black cloud above my happiness.

And in that black cloud are all the other happy things I could be doing, or would be doing. If maybe he hadn’t moved out, he could be doing this happy thing with me right now. Or I could be somewhere else doing something happy with him. But I’m not. I’m here, and I’m happy, and I’m without him.

That’s strange isn’t it? To feel unhappy about being happy. Or to feel unhappy about something that made you happy.

Did you feel like that too? Did all your memories of grandmother make you feel the way my memories of him make me feel?

All those times we laughed together, danced together, slept together, held each other, cried together- all the things that made me happy- now they crush me. They are like arrows in my body. Every time I touch them, they sear me with needles of pain. But I cannot bear to go through the pain of taking them out, and worse, to stitch the gaping wounds they’ll leave.

The memories are diamond dust in my throat. Slowly killing me with their deceptive beauty.

I miss you.

Do you know?

I miss you very much. I don’t understand how I do since you were only a part of my life for the first six years. I’m 36 now. Thirty years have gone by since I said goodbye to you.

It’s difficult to forget your face that day. It was as if each crevice of a wrinkle on your face hid tiny lead balls that made your skin sag even further. Your movements were heavier than I had ever seen them to be, but something was different, and I knew it. You were heavier- but lighter. Is that possible? Every step you took seemed to be purposeful if not hesitant.

I felt the sadness that came with each look at you diminish somehow, or maybe it was just pushed into a depth that I did not know I had in me. For some reason, I knew you had made up your mind about something and it filled you with a light. A dark light, I think now.

I remembering wanting desperately to see your eyes, but your back was to me.
I followed you furtively, my every step a new espionage film.
I saw you walk into your room, and so I went into the next.

There was a door that connected the two; I pressed my ear to it. There was a scraping of something heavy on the tiled floor. A chair.

My heart began to beat. A steady drum roll, hammering at me from inside out. I worried you’d hear me and stop. Now, sometimes I wish you had.

I’m not sure what compelled me to do it, but I made up my mind quite suddenly and pushed open the door.

I wish I could have seen the shapes in your eyes.

When your figure vanished from the window, I did not wait to hear the ensuing thump as I ran out the door, down the six flights of stairs to you.

My breath became heavy like yours, my each step forward heavy like yours, my eyes turned to mules of burden like yours. I could see you.

A tiny, tangled mass of blood, body and emotion.

I approached you steadily, no one else knew just yet, and my heart rate slowed.
I stopped when I was right beside you- as close as if you were sleeping and I was poking the veins on your arm- and watched you.

I could almost see each memory of her float up from you towards the heavens. I could see you sit on each wisp and ride the strands of thought all the way up to the cloudless, blue, burning hot sky.

Is it odd that for the first time you looked peaceful? Your head wasn’t whole, your body wasn’t straight, your heart wasn’t working. But you were peaceful.


When I was finally satisfied that you were happy, I turned and left. My breath was even, my footsteps were light, my eyes clear.

I stopped before the end and turned to look at you. There you lay, and from you to me there was a trail of footsteps. Tiny feet shaped with your blood. I looked down behind me and saw the last one. Did it make me sad? I’m not sure how I felt anymore.

One day I hope you’ll help me find the freedom that you found.

Monster

Sometimes I feel
As though everything inside is
Alive.

A monster throwing itself
At the wrought iron bars
That make up its cage.

Sometimes I feel that if
You came too close
The monster would pull you in.

He would wrap his claws around
Your body and crush you
To pulp.

Sometimes I want you to
Come near enough
But mostly, I hope you don’t.

Because I know
That after tasting your blood
The monster would crave you more

And once you have been inside
I know you’ll want to run
And hide.

But the monster and I
Will miss you sourly
And so,

I hope you don’t.