On the run again. Rubber slapping concrete, accumulating into the blood-filled blister on my big toe which reminds me that I can’t outrun myself.
Blossoms in February. A mild winter. Yellow warnings of rain. Yellow buds bursting out of the grass in crop circles. Portents of some message I cannot decipher. Charging past it all in retreat from the rapid formation of change.
Light and colour have appeared too soon. The time is out of joint. This screaming ache in my chest which I thought I had purged. The re-emergence of something believed to be dead, yet simply gone missing. Returned to sender.
I am not ready to blossom.
There is more of me yet to die.
The lackadaisical comfort of winter is being disturbed by this premature blossoming. The promise of brighter, longer days which I had forgotten were bound to arrive. I had just gotten used to this. Grey skies and damp trainers. The barren trees stripped down to their veins, sprawling lines of static electricity, antennae exposed to the elements, collecting whatever signals remain, blocked by the dense cloud.
More dark afternoons, please. I want to cling to the melancholy of winter. It’s too soon. Spring’s momentum grates on the inside of me. An activating energy which bundles itself up in the nerve endings of my stomach. Secreting daggers of movement which stir me to do nothing.
Like a vampire I’m afraid I will wither in the light of spring. Cowering behind burnt retinas. Afraid that the seeds planted inside of me in the distant past will grow only to dormancy, burying deeper into the flesh, reoriented towards decay.
Beautiful, devastating hope and all the terror of possibility which it brings. That darkness which is now receding had finally found itself a place to call home. Must I resign along with it? I do not yet want to let go.
Surprised by the joy this premature blossom has unsettled within me. A place which I had forgotten still existed. Not yet demolished. Changed utterly, but not yet ready to be filled with the joys of spring.
The blossom doesn’t know it has peaked too soon. Confused by flooded fertile soils. This stifling mesh does not seem to be changing with the seasons. It will not leave my chest without a fight. Now the window is open and the soft air seeps in, but as it sinks will it displace the burnt roots residing here?
The Jaded Optimist 