Malfunction

“You have to believe me,”

he said.

I wake up in the morning and rub my eyes.

My hair is cascading in unruly swirls

over my shoulders.

The snow is falling in sweet caresses

over my windowsill.

He is sitting

with his back to me and mumbling

frantically about something I don’t know.

His fingers are tapping on the desk

as they do when he gets very restless

and can’t sit still

and getting up again and again and again.

An icicle sits precariously outside

the kitchen window.

I am watching.

The wheeled leather chair spins round and I look at his face.

He always used to tell me I was the apple of his eye

and smile softly with affection

but now

his eyes are open wide and fearful looking

straight beyond me.

In fact I am certain he does not even see me at all.

The words out of his mouth are

so quick

to overlap each other

they barely make sense to me

something about

my dead father and fishing

and running

far

far

far away.

He is jittery and restless.

It all sounds like gibberish.

The wind howls outside.

It is almost loud enough to drown out the noise

he makes as he knocks over the chair

with a bang

and yells for the ghost outside the

kitchen window to take a hike.

That’s not what he says, exactly.

It’s much more polite.

Once he told me

what it felt like

to lose control

when your brain

moves so fast that

your mouth can’t keep up

when the thoughts in your head

incoherent and unrelated

and racing so fast it’s impossible

to say what’s on your mind

or form a sentence

that makes any sort of sense

and so you try to say everything

at once

and it comes out an avalanche of

word diarrhoea

until you just give up

and say nothing at all.

I will never truly understand.

I am not the one who lives it.

error 707:

malfunctioning brain

A gust of wind hits the tree in the backyard.

A branch hits the kitchen window loudly,

frightening me

so that I fall off of my chair.

The snowstorm only seems to be getting worse.

It’s ironic, really,

he has always told me he liked storms

because they are chaotic

like him

I am not like most people.

I have lived through multiple storms at once.

“You have to believe me,”

he said

and I never did.

He is gone

and the back door is open wide

and letting all the chill inside.

He has jumped

off of the garage roof

again

and left an imprint in the snow

on the ground.

He has jumped off the balcony again

and I remember the time when

I was five and he jumped

off the roof and broke his collarbone

and did not notice until

my mother

saw the bone sticking out of his arm.

My hair is flipped in knots

over my face.

The snow is falling in angry thumps

against the garage door.

The car has gone and he has gone with it

far away

and out of touch

and who knows where

Once he told me

what it felt like

to lose touch

when your brain makes you think

that you are incredibly

invincible

and famous

when you become

so reckless that you nearly

kill yourself or someone else

and do not realise

when your brain convinces you

your dead father or an evil being

is speaking to you

and so you run away

but they follow

I will never truly understand.

I know only what I have witnessed.

error 606:

a chemical imbalance in the brain

My mother calls.

He has crashed the car and broke the windows

and spent 900 pounds on things none of us need

and this is why we’re always out of money.

“They were coming,”

he said.

I wake up in the morning and rub my eyes.

My hair is sweeping in unbrushed clumps

over my shoulders.

The sun is peeking its cautious eye

in between the cracks in the blinds.

He is lying on an unmade bed

with his back to me

and snoring softly

and I take the blanket from the foot of the bed

and lie it over him

because his fingers are curled

into his palm

the way they always are

when he gets cold.

A flower peeks its head

through the grass

outside the bedroom window.

It is peaceful

and I see the photograph on the wall

of him and my father

and if I didn’t know better I would wonder

who was who.

The sun smiles outside.

Who does it think it is

beaming in the sky

It’s almost like it’s poking fun at us.

Look at the sun bright and cheerful

shining down on miserable people.

Look at the sunshine and its cruel jokes.

When I was a little girl

he took care of me

tucking me into bed every night

kissing my wounds better

holding me in tight hugs

when I cried because I was sad

or I had a nightmare

or I missed my father

or somebody at school

made fun of my freckles

the way they always did

but I am not a little girl

and I take care of him now

because it is the least I could do

after all these years.

This room is a mess.

He needs some fresh air.

“I am sorry,”

he said

and it broke my heart.

The room remains uncleaned.

The food remains untouched.

He does not speak

but I can hear all of his unspoken words

in the air between us

and I can see all of the unvoiced thoughts

in his downcast eyes.

My mother pleads.

He does not leave the house

or speak to me

and then he goes to work

like nothing at all is wrong

and I am scared.

My mother calls.

She says that he is back to his old self

and telling jokes

and goofing off

and everything is fine.

The sun is high in the sky.

Once he told me

what it felt like to lose hope

when your brain forgets

how to balance and you

forget how to laugh

when nothing seems to

make sense

and you just want

to feel okay

but you don’t

and you don’t

and you don’t

But everything is fine.

I wake up in the morning and rub my eyes.

The trees shed their coats

with one brief shiver.

It is cold.

The photograph remains

on the living room wall

of the smiling face I long

to touch again

I shiver because it is cold.

His bedroom sits untouched.

Sometimes when I enter it

I can still smell him.