Time As Measured in Pain

 

Anytime I find myself alone, I cry, and not always with a concrete reason. I seem to need it. It tears through me like the slice of noise when the forgotten car window is cracked open at high speeds. I think I have been lying to and running from myself for so long, whenever I catch up, I can only resort to wordless grief.

I will never be myself with my father. There are so many artificial borders painted around the table – the table that is constantly between us. I feel better if there is a table to buffer the blows, to cling to in high gales and through crashing waves. What else can I cling to? Whatever truth we had between us now lies in a dark abyss beyond the seafloor. There are unsaid words glistening on the tabletop, but they roll off, drip drop and every time the salty murk gets a little deeper. Is it any wonder I think we'll drown?

With my children I have to swallow the dark that sits on my tongue. The bile rises steadily, and sometimes the shadow reaches out through my teeth in the languages of impatience, of dullness. I struggle to stay within the flickering light that cast the shadow, shreds of love holding me together until they sleep. Then I let the dark eat me, immobile until morning.

I cannot understand myself. The mutual language in between holds only a few rudimentary phrases, and most coherent of that is fury. I wake with dread, in blackness. The silence comforts me, the same way it does when the doctor pauses to check the lab results. There is some time to learn another lesson, distilled through the lens of pain. I would rather understand the dawn.