Consciously Subconscious - a poem
The cake was to share. My brother and I blew at the fireworks like the wolves in the nursery rhyme. The cake was mine to share. Barney on only one side but that was mine. I’d share. Bean bags became rocks to sit on. Too close, I always thought, to the TV and to him. A year seems so long until that is all that separates you. Time feels like rain in the desert. Dessert. Pancakes on Sunday mornings were sweet like sugar or the bitterness of lemon. My tongue was thick and my mouth felt sticky for hours. Both made me feel sick. Sometimes, I didn’t want either. No one told me about choices. Cream was my favourite and I wanted that. I like the way it sounds when you squeeze the can. Skchh. Okay, sugar. Splash. Mum flies into the pool one summer’s day and I can finally play with her. She screams. It’s too cold. She shivers her way out and lies back on the towel. She wants to sunbathe while all I want is her to splash me with her attention. Instead, I lie beside her. I’m a grown up but I don’t tan like her. I dream of boyfriends often. Not my own, but hers. They come in numbers like a marching band and I like the look of none of the instruments. The sounds of the drums are too loud, too invasive, and I want them gone. Each one looks the same as the one before. Does anyone ever get it right? To depend on nothing is such a free way to live but can be so lonely. The fantasy, the romance novels; they distract me from the real life nothing. They never work out. They never did for her. I want to keep them out. Logic: living within time, structure, rules. I wish you could see the reality of things. What is not illusionary makes so little sense to me. The mind is much lonelier than the matter.
