Saturday 8 August 2009

Falling

Dear F,

This missive will be my last from here. I am sorry. This is all I have left to do. I will disappear. Fade into the ether inside these walls, inside these gardens that keep me safe. Or held. It had been so long I've forgotten how this all began. With dancing perhaps? Or birds made of paper that disintegrated when the rain began to fall. I loved the rain. It washed the grease paint from the illusionist’s face. Remember him running for shelter in the glasshouse? But the illusions did not stop. Remember the glass cracking beneath our feet? Crystal meeting boot sole and glasses that made a sweep of stars on the grass when the lights fired in the house. Perhaps that signalled the end of the party? When the gates closed between us. I missed my chance to leave then, it was moment between fading bells. Then the wheels turned and the bars came rattling down. The noise hurt like metallic twisting inside bone, like a needle through a tooth. The sound cut through the music, the calls of celebration and song. It drowned out everything because I knew what it meant. The division of something so whole it weighed on me with its simply being there. So present as one. Like a book torn in two – neither clutch of pages making sense without the other, a half read story forming to mush in the rain. And I was left standing in a room of spinners, lights exploding and fading behind my eyes and the makers of changes forgot me. Everything felt like glass and light. But perhaps you knew that's what it would take to save me? Perhaps you knew I could not last beyond? I could hope. But no longer. The time here never changes. The clocks repeat the hours but the days. The days never change. Oh for a day to shift into another in the night. But all here is laughter, song, light. Laughter song, light. The chandeliers are smashed again and again and I have begun to walk across in expectant pain once they have hit the ground. But no blood is drawn. Nothing touches me. I think there is a millimetre of space between me and all else. Everything else is a trace away from feeling. I am suspended and need to fall. I need to fall. Maybe you have already begun? We can hit the ground together. The lights are bursting once more. The ivy grows up the walls at such a pace! The only thing that ever alters here and it's the thing that closes us in. Fills the gaps for sighting outside. I am closing in and this is the only way; to disappear. To begin the falling. I shall fall in a million pieces. Pieces that will drift upwards on the wind and over the walls. I will divide and fall sideways through the atmosphere. I need to fall. I will become the exploding light. I am sorry. I am going to disappear. Meet me at the falling.

Yours ever,

S