My park was such a living place, the memory of it still as a monument, its outlines hemmed with dark matter. But lost inland, will I go back, do I have it in me to go left or right?
There is no doubt sleep is a puzzle, the way rivers flow unescaped in circles and curves. Wrestling a dream of ropes, we lose and grab meaning: it’s the same place, but from different angles.
He points at the sweater and the pink plastic hairbrush lying in the gutter. I ask him for a hug, and he says no. I have my mask on! I’m sure the drugs had something to do with it.
Lone lions, still rocks, they are chopping wood. Standing at the bar gives them posture, a singular moral compess: hard consistently prevails.
They stand with their backs to the woods, the hand down as a guide. You are a legend. Wanna see the picture? A blur of legs/ arms/ adrenaline/ joy/danger.
That memory is the first visit of the la, the same ball punctured in the mouth, the hand I can’t write with. You are inside it, naked in public, wet after a swim in the wild, a blessing, of course.
The colour of wine, sea air and coal dust are around us in all directions. The sky, like forget-me-nots in summer, has clouds rising to the top of the frame splitting water, buttercups and daisies everywhere.
The past strikes like lightning, a sudden brightening; light hits the shore with the force of a ram and makes its own groove. I find, in dark-grey-ash, a colour to describe that park. It is the only visible light, the longest, bluest, a word I keep forgetting.
The landscape, to my surprise, has a theme, a weight, we, unbothered like birds in bad weather, don’t have to carry. The sky is half blue-half rain, a green question, a blue answer, and the colours, or directions, change with every burst of the wind, like the lighting of a fire.
Mélisande Fitzsimons
Image: Claire Palmer
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