Bloukrans

Reluctantly one foot follows another. It’s sound disappearing in my wake. My chest heaves heavily, as if I was running but I’m already standing still. The full weight of my time on earth is dawning; it’s limited – now I know. All at once, like the rushing wind announcing the train in the tunnel and the dripping of a rain drop – inevitably it will all stop.

Now I know that it matters not how big or small or light or brown I was when I was here. It matters not that I never knew those things you know and concealed from me for years. Would I have done things differently? Tick follows tock. Still

Drip follows drop and just like that I cease to be. Gone. I am wrapped in thoughts of leaving as my feet lifts off the ground. I can see a blue horizon; I can hear a marching band.

We must have structure, it brings us pain, which brings us together – and then we howl in shame. because we are all wolves – we should have been alone, but we cannot accept this fate. We all built the weapons that tore down the flags, that killed the freedom in all of their TV land. Click – change channel quick – too much dis-information not enough miss information – where have all the feminists gone? This is our contribution to ending violence. We witness atrocities, then emulate them at home, strip our young of civil liberty then sing freedom songs alone. It’s gone. All gone – a blink and it’s gone.

This feeling of disconnectedness is one I have known quite well, this is the price we pay for freedom, this is our escape. The lightness of a feeling, the feeling of being awake. One blink and its all gone, hardly time for tears. One blink and I am gone, running from myself and you.

The eerie silence reminds me of fine balancing act, of expressing an emotion and of lying on my back. I am dangling vertically down a horizontal gorge, my boot straps are loosening, there is blood pounding in my ears. Now I know this feeling but had no memory of experiencing it, that nothing really matters, not you or her or it or them, or what was or is or is to come. It’s all gone.

This silence today is the same as the one when dangling from that rope, off that bridge, when I whispered those things – then echoed back through the thighs of the gorge funneled back into the ears of a 20 year old Tracey, I still have nothing to hide. Now 30 year old meisie. Nothing to hide from or to

and

right then and there I committed to smelling every rose, hugging any child, touching anything that enticed my senses, I would love and I would dance – for it will all go towards that stop. Be gone one day, far removed from this – the pleasure of sounds and silence of agonising drought and pain, the fun of loving and anguish of loving in vain. I am here and I am waiting for you. Dangling from an invisible chain.