by Alex Cregan
10.
This is the perfect place to start.
You were leaving for home but you crashed your car
Into our fence, wood between the wheel and it’s smooth metal body,
Red paint scratched away. The wood is still broken away
To this day. Then,
We weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry
But maybe it was a sign
That you would never fully leave us. That part of you would always be in that driveway.
9.
I still have that novel you got me, signed your name in,
‘Happy Birthday’ curling around your tender, amber voice.
To be honest, the pages are beginning to yellow, it’s so dusty and worn. The
Cover is peeling away, tearing at the corners
But I can’t let go of you just yet.
8.
Some song about dreams plays over the radio and I sing along,
Loud and screeching and lovely. My childhood is defined by car rides.
By music.
By melodies drifting and half rhymes sighing, lulling my yelling mind to rest. Echolalia for
The undiagnosed to quiet those motors whirring.
What I wouldn’t give to let myself sing again,
Feel no fear in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel,
Ready to try.
7.
Your departure was doves to the wind. I was left behind, weak and shaking in your golden light,
White wings dismembered and bloody.
I never dare to let myself miss you.
6.
I lie and call this Strength but soon learn
Strength is the screams and sobs, the tearing of paintings from canvas
Strength is the chaos I never let myself embrace. Strength is the lion’s jaw clamping down
On my fragile hand, shattering bone.
Strength is the grief and I never admitted
I wanted to be the Emergency Room.
I wanted to be the lilies at your funeral.
I spoke with clarity then, without tears in my eyes
And my family called it bravery.
5.
Bravery is bullshit and here’s why.
This is barely my story to tell. I am the antithesis of my younger self.
No confidence, crumbling identity,
No one to push me on the swings as I scream
“Higher! Higher!” not afraid to fall then because you were always there to catch me.
I don’t want this poem to end, I’ll admit
Because then I’m alone in my emotions and nothing scares me more.
This is how the autopsy ends, with me, left eviscerated,
An incomplete vivisection bleeding out on your living room carpet.
I am trying to admit that I miss you.
I am trying to admit to everything nowadays.
I am trying to cling to every part of my youth I should have cast away,
I’m trying to tattoo it to me so it can never leave, branded on my skin in
Ink-stains and harmonies.
Not like you.
I should apologise for being honest, I didn’t mean to upset you.
4.
I want to be everything I can’t, everything you never knew me as-
The passionate one, more fire than ice, more fight than freeze.
‘Handsome little thing, by god,
Who wouldn’t want to fuck you up?’
Button up shirts and soft foundations, masquerade as a gentleman and get wrecked like a whore.
I’ve fallen from grace. I should apologise. I didn’t want you to see this side of me,
Clinging to a rosary like it could possibly save me-
She never knew, She saw me as an angel
But he knows well enough that purity is a façade,
Leaves me feeling everything I’ve ever asked for.
Leaves me dying and dead and revived,
There to catch me in his arms should I fall.
I’m sorry I was never who you wanted or needed but I’m discovering myself and, sure,
This could be a metaphor for some shit or maybe I’m just that disgusting but I don’t think that
matters
Anymore.
The author dies as soon as words reach the page,
As soon as the knife clatters to the pavement.
3.
It takes a while for any progress to rear its snarling head. It takes a while to want
Recovery. It takes longer to want to want it. I was never a princess in the castle, I was never
Defenseless or broken. Really,
All I am is a narrator
And I want to be able to tell you this story without admitting anything
But relapse is a cliff-face, a steep and jarring drop and all I’ve ever wanted to do is fly.
2.
I’m learning breathing exercises to calm myself. They work, sometimes.
I’m learning to take up space and not feel guilt tear me into pieces.
I’m learning what I deserve and that’s
Everything. Everything sickening and lovely and violent and graceful.
Every blue or grey or red or
Delight or horror.
I deserve care. Dumb and cliche as that is.
And I deserve it on my terms.
It’s difficult, so difficult. But isn’t the attempt enough?
The attempt to appreciate
That I have survived. That I have carved a name from bone.
That I have taken it with me to the sky.
1.
Maybe The Fall was always coming. Maybe we didn’t realise.
Am I ready? I can barely ask. I can barely scream
Through the twilight.
I won’t tell you about the bus rides, about listening alone,
About the world around us shifting and changing faster than we care to admit.
When did we become so oblivious? When did we stop noticing?
When did the sun crash into earth? Little heat death,
Bodies melting, an eldritch experience.
The trees flare up first, the oceans dry to dust,
Then
The lovers take each other in their arms, the friends too, and the families
As their only child (their daughter, they think) takes to the sky,
Falls to the sea,
Falls prey to the gods and their hungry,
Gnashing teeth
But really, who notices?
[RESET IN…]
Do you want to know what comes after…
Oh, sweetheart,
My love and the light
At the end. All there is
Is this.
Repeating Infinitely Indefinitely,
Don’t you want out by now,
Of this horrid, tiring, rat race…
Memory, honesty,
Self mutilation and above all
Being alone? Don’t you want Out.
Well, let me tell you how…
10.
This is a perfect place to start.
You were leaving for home but you crashed your car
Into our fence, wood between the wheel and it’s smooth metal body,
Red paint scratched away.
We weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry
But maybe it was a sign
That you would never leave us.
Alex Cregan is a writer, poet and creative facilitator from Derry, Ireland. His work was most recently featured in Abridged and the engine(idling. Alex is a recipient of his city’s artist and cultural practitioner fund, with much of his work being inspired by disability and queerness.
