Black Boxes. Caroline Smailes

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      [sound: sniff sniff]

      I thought that the neatness and the organisation and the perfectly horizontalness.

      Well I thought that you liked that.

      [volume: high]

      No kinks and no bends.

      A perfectly straight route from here to there.

      From there to here.

      To nowhere else.

      And on that day when you wrote our two names into the sand.

      Well I didn't realise that one day.

      When you wanted.

      That you'd wash away the +ANA that was joined to the ALEX.

      [sound: sobbing]

      [silence]

      But your name would never go away.

      It grew fainter, but it is still there.

      I still see it there.

      I can still see ALEX+ANA.

      [sound: throat clearing]

      You started a new life.

      ALEX+SUE.

      But I can't write another name.

      There are no other names that are perfectly straight and perfectly able to cover ALEX.

      [silence]

      But you went off.

      And you found that new name.

      And it had curves in it because you had decided that you preferred curves.

      The lines no longer needed to be straight.

      You adapted.

      You accepted.

      You left me here.

      You left me.

      Trapped.

      [silence]

      My room is a box.

      A black box.

      A sometimes ruby red box.

       ~Is that confusing?~

      You trapped me in here.

      [voiced: unrecognisable word]

      [volume: low]

      I have a front.

      I have a back.

      They are my window and my door.

      My door takes me to my children.

      My door keeps me from your Pip and my Davie.

      Our two children.

       ~They are your children too.~

       ~But you know that they are your children too!~

       ~Am I trying to be too clever?~

      The view from my window is ever changing.

      I see the sand.

      I see the sea.

      And that image is my painting mounted in a chipped red window frame.

      A sometimes black window frame.

      A perfect square.

      A perfect painting.

      A painting that holds the memories of you and me.

      We met as students.

       ~I know that you remember that.~

      We lived in the same halls.

      On the same corridor.

      And we met in the first week.

      You were so quiet.

      All the girls wanted to know you.

      To know what made you tick.

      You were different.

      You carried books around with you.

      And you read those books.

      You had a guitar.

      And you could play your guitar.

      Your friends were all girls.

      You preferred female company.

      And although girls flashed their breasts at you and although girls flicked their flowing hair and offered themselves to you.

      You never accepted.

      You had integrity.

      It covered you in a bubble.

      It protected you.

       ~When did it pop?~

       ~When did the bubble burst?~

       ~Was it when you selected that girl from that magazine and trimmed her flawless edge?~

      I love(d) you.

      I used to watch you playing your guitar in the common room.

      And I love(d) you.

       ~Did you realise then?~

      We were friends before we were anything else.

      We were friends that became something else.

      [silence]

      But not until our second year

      I was chair of the Poetry Society.

      You'd come along to listen.

       ~Did you realise that they were all about you?~

      You used to listen.

      You never clapped.

      And then afterwards you'd always want to walk me home.

      Sometimes СКАЧАТЬ