The Years We Didn’t Use

We wander aimlessly

from the bosom of our mother

into a world

we are never fully prepared for.

-

We find our footing—

or something like stable—

wobbly with uneasiness,

tentative.

-

From there we progress,

sometimes hampered,

sometimes encouraged

by the family we are born into.

-

You were delivered into the world

twenty odd years

before I was even considered.

-

Life imposed itself on you

as it does on everyone—

work to pay

for living,

surviving.

Socialising at the pub

Snooker hall

Or dancing

Never really resting.

-

You met it.

Experienced it.

Were shaped by it.

-

By the time I came

you had already settled

into some kind of maturity.

-

And that, Dad,

was just the beginning.

-

—

-

While I was learning

the me I wanted to be—

-

same house,

different rooms,

different lives—

-

passing each other in doorways,

conversations brief enough to forget.

-

—

-

It’s thoughts like these

that keep me awake.

That haven’t let up

since you left us.

-

We were never close.

And then your illness meant

we never could be.

-

I could have tried earlier.

Said more.

Sat with you.

But you were already

receding—

The room lit, the sound of life

with you in the background—

a body present,

something else gone.

-

That is how life rolls out:

unfinished,

unrehearsed.

-

—

-

I think about you more.

Not less.

-

Questions unanswered.

Issues unresolved.

-

I am learning to live with that.

-

But this is what remains:

-

—

-

Some days

I feel trampled

and broke.

-

I curl—no, sink—into the floor.

Lie there.

Wait.

-

Counting dust in the air

instead of living.

-

For the shadows to pass—

or for something more than this:

this need for control,

this hollow stability.

-

Something beyond

emotion itself.

-

Atrophy creeps

quietly.

-

While inertia sleeps

like it belongs.

-

And I am left

there—

horizontal—

floor, sofa,

it doesn’t matter—

-

just

there.

-

With thoughts that bloom

and taunt

and assume

I will cave.

-

Because

sometimes

I do.

-

Sometimes that’s all I do.

Sometimes that’s all I can do.

Sometimes it’s all I want.

-

Until it dulls.

Shifts.

Becomes something I believe:

-

that I am worth less

than this.

-

So I lie

until it hurts less.

Eat until the feeling

numbs.

-

Because it waits in silence—

-

where the space between

is louder than my heartbeat.

-

—

-

And Radio Ga Ga still

lands heavier than it should.

-

And all that is left

of you,

of us,

of what never was—

-

is this:

-

Atrophy.

*

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