Month: September 2016

You reflect on my body,  

My body is my soul.

Waves repeat, blurred edges,

Where’s the start, the end?

Ripples shine, fog truth, blur.

What is becomes what may

have been. Reflections. This

is all a mirage, isn’t it?

I saw clarity, you know.

Saw strength where there

was only wavering.

Reflections.

Soggy foggy reflections.

Now I lie in water, still movement

with patience, stoic skill.

Still.

Now I reflect.

You have wounded me.

Those jagged edges softly distort

caressing my skin, lapping gently

against my flesh, my soul.

This was all harmless, right?

Idle moments, idly expressed.

Harmless. Soft. Blurred.

Who would have thought?

I reflect.

I see only reflections.

                             Sandie Zand, 20th September 2016

We drank and talked, as friends do, about stuff… stuff that cannot be altered or fixed, from long ago in fact – pre-dating said friendship by decades (and continents) – yet stuff that somehow curiously needed to surface right now, be discussed, be shared, be exorcised.

A strange thing: the talking over of stuff long past – school, upbringing, Larkin’s theory of parental error – and how this arises from a slight comment, a passing memory, taking over all conversation as each recalls significant moments, a growing crescendo of them… until two hours later the world has shrunk completely into those memories, their clarity, the sensory resurrection of emotional impact.

And we are little girls again.

For some curious reason, as I walked home – and I guess analysis will come in a dream, on waking, whatever – it put me in mind of this song by Amelia Curran, Tiny Glass Houses:

There’s a crack in my memory,

As if something has gone

And split the foundation

Of shadow, of song

And rattled the windows,

And the tiny regrets

And the tiny glasses houses

That I tried to forget