Somedays

Somedays

I push out

Dissociate and disconnect

Float, disembodied

Formless and unattached,

Seeing everything

Differently

From among the cobwebs

At the back of a cupboard

Under the stairs,

Or overlooking the top shelf

Of a wardrobe

Where I store some of her drawings.

I browse through them

Hands-free

A spiritual journey

Looking for redemption

Never finding it

Even in beauty.

I rarely have the capacity

To study them properly

My eyes wash over

Skimming, from time to time.

They are good,

Too good not to be seen

All of them are variations

On heartbreak

I have to steal myself

To scrape

The rust out of my brain stem,

One more time.

I couldn’t lose them

Even if the moths

Have found the edges of some.

I repackaged them

Into clear plastic pockets

Mounted a few

The ones I love

Whether or not I look

It is good to know

That they are there.

I raise a glass

In their direction

Probably do it a little

Too often

For good health.

Even though I don’t want to believe

In a god,

Benign or otherwise,

I believe in purgatory

And this is it.

It is no easier

To look at photographs

I rarely look at an album

Or a wallet

They too are stacked

Wrapped together

With elastic bands

Just out of reach

I would need a ladder

Which was a novelty song

Back when I was a kid

What was that guy’s name again?

There was a time and place

When my life

Held significance

Other than as a repository

Of the past,

To remember is to live

I know this to be true

But rarely do I believe.

The top shelf is above head height

For a reason

And don’t get me started

On her laptop

Why do I keep it?

The thing wouldn’t even fire up

Without perseverance

When she used it

Lord knows what it would do now

Steam driven

Enough to blow a gasket

Remember them?

And it was Bernard Cribbins.

Of course, it was.