The winter breaks to herald new brains and new ideas. Things that have passed away many months ago on an autumn breeze have now returned stronger, and more dominant. The smiles we create seem bigger, stretching easily from cheek to cheek as if the winter ice that has frozen the tips of our mouths has melted giving way to baby skin, preserved. Speech creates a circle, where thoughts flow freely after months of silent consideration, and miming debate.
The winter calms the busy mind and gives us a long moment and breath with which to think and reflect. The winter breaks to herald new brains and ideas. The cold freezing breeze that gently blew across the mind in January and their twin, ceases to be existant and morphs. A warm, gentle air strokes the mind and helps the mind unwind from its coiled state. We can breathe again. Ice bars that gave us protective sanctum has been cracked, splintered, and left to melt into puddles that do nothing but reflect the sky, now blue.
And most importantly the fire ball is back, warming the mind's train tracks, and creatures backs, smiling, placed in the sky like the last jigsaw piece. He is a passionate mind, fiery and positive and she is his counterpart, calm, collected, beautiful and pensive. The grey clouded completion that covered both their faces during the winter months have been diluted by fresh breeze, and the stagnant residue they cast on the world is no longer there. The winter rain now in turn, transformed into swallows, diving from the blue sky, dancing in spontaneous shapes, carrying specs of the sun on their feathered backs and gleaming beaks.
The animals, in abundance, wake from their deep slumber, eyes flickering, irises like dying flames. Then slowly like the melting river, they open, one by one. The gentle opening of the cherry blossom eyelids and the pupils like minnows now in a shaken pond signal the opening of the door to its instincts that have laid dormant for the past months.
The winter now retreats, step by step, into the ground, burying its hands and feet, rolling in the warm, sun kissed dirt, and bidding farewell to the branches and the waters skin that it clinged to for so long. The flowing river thickens breathing with each shiver it sends from the top of its spine to its coccyx, now a pair of jutting rocks which divides the current in two. And from this scene, comes a sound, a sound of life, a sound of a cycle starting again. A pause, a sigh, and a feeling of peace.
Just beyond the river stood a tree, battered by the winter's winds, and bowed in a subservient pose, his back snapped and branches worn down. The icicles clung to his skin like fleas, still melting slowly, and as every drop of water fell to his roots from his top he groaned. His icy white coat which chilled in the winter months now slipped off as his gnarled fingers reached for the sun and his wrinkled torso leaked moisture. As he stood there, amongst the others, his age could be seen, a man amongst boys and girls, crippled and worn. An old man amongst youth, a rundown outhouse by a modern housing complex, a wrinkle on a babies face.
It was here where, without warning, the floor began to vibrate, the branches of the trees, victorious over the winters ammunition, shook and the animals, alert now, glanced in the direction of the advancing smoke cloud. The shaking continued and the melting snow revealed tracks. Suddenly, a scarlet machine burst through the scene, wheels turning, burning coal, windows steamed up from the morning fog, and glistening branches whipped aside by the more glistening completion of a now advancing train.
As the train danced further through the countryside I look out of the window, avoiding the constant flurry of branches that whipped past me. Blurring trees seemed to looked up at the carriage and merge into a stream of colours and pass with a faint noise as if a butterfly had landed on one’s shoulder and took flight on a passing spring breeze.
The flowers in my hand carried the faint smell of Spring, and this rose up, carried on the carriages stale air to greet my senses. This refreshing scent stood and like a sedative calmed my thoughts. I could taste the air on my tongue, the leather from the tattered satchels, the perfume resting on the passengers pores, and the mix of tobacco from the gentleman in the carriage opposite my own. As the scene floated past like an over excited hummingbird it’s as if music flowed from outside, through the window into my ear, you could almost hear it echo off my skull and issue from my mouth like a fine mist, forming circles around my head; a bubble that put me in my own little world.
The fresh spring air didn't reach those in the carriage, but rather taunted them from the outside as leaves ran past the windows and the reddening clouds in the background looked like a fine cotton thread weaved in and out of the sky, puncturing cloud after cloud creating a elaborated picture of swirls and lines.
It was now 3 years to this very day that I said goodbye to her, that I embraced her for the final time and turned around never looking over my shoulder. Her eyes didn't see me though, they were grey, lost, and clouded. Her arms wrapped around me like I was a stranger, someone who you didn't meet all those years ago, spend all those nights together, share all those moments with. When she kissed me the lips were cold, hard, granite-like boulders, that loosely sat there, as I tried to warm them with the dying fire I still felt for her in my heart.
3 years ago, like a toy on a worn top shelf, she was placed in Pilgrim Psychiatric Centre, no longer fit to play with the children and other toys, broken beyond repair. Her stuffing had been pulled from a large seem in her head, and the thread that kept the parts together had unravelled, only just holding her head to her shoulders.
She entered this place a weak woman, paranoid, as if someone had just turned off a light in her head and she was forever fumbling around in the dark, wanting to desperately to get out, and yet unable to escape these bonds that her broken sanity had formed around her wrists and ankles. And so I had no choice, society had ruled her 'unfit for public exposure' so she was taken by authorities and placed in this red brick, snow covered structure that would become her home and hell for the next 3 years.
I remember that parting like it was yesterday, cliché as it sounds, the 8am morning fog rested on the scene, and dragged my heart further down into the pit of my stomach. Gravity was double the normal force that day, as a lifetime of tears poured non-stop from my tear ducts and down my cheeks. Her pale face reflected the rising sun as it came over the house and shone off the police ambulance windows. Pale from the fear of leaving, pale from the restless night's sleep, pale from the hatred she felt for me. It was if she was a murderer taken away from society, a criminal. A bomb about to go off and rip a hole in the heart of the town she grew up in. She was just a woman, quiet, shy, alien to the 'normal' things around her and people pushed her away, or placed themselves as far away from her as they could. The pain I felt when I uttered 'I love you' and she gazed right through me, as if I was invisible. As if someone performed a sudden lobotomy on my right atrium. As I felt this my body began to shake, building in my body and exploding from my mouth in a sob, and still she stood still. My love, motionless. As if I was looking into a black and white picture of a distant memory and seeing the cracked smiling faces but seeing no story behind, no frame holding it all together, just blank faces. And it was a pain I’d never experienced.
And then she was gone, her pale faced not pressed against the cold glass, her hands not up in retaliation, she just sat, in the back seat, facing forward, speeding down the road. Calm, like when I met her for the first time.
Picture the scene. Cafe situated on the side of a busy pavement. The tables cloths had just been put out on the wooden folding tables and the chairs sat, each in perfect position. The weather that day was not cold but fresh, like when you step out of your door and the breeze gives you a single shiver and then leaves not to return again for another twenty four hours. The people walked around with scarfs and woollen hats, socks rolled up high and gloves even higher. Due to the atmosphere and the mood that I possessed that day I viewed it in black and white. But then I saw her. And I saw all the colour that I didn't see before in her. Her scarlet scarf matched her lipstick, and her beige woollen jumper made her look like the cosiest woman alive. She wore tight trousers and slight heeled shoes, and walked with an air of purpose. She was to be the most beautiful woman I had seen, and to be completely truthful, she could have been an angel. So I sat at the bar of the Cafe with my coffee and she came in through the door. And to me it seemed like the whole Cafe fell into silence at this new found wonder of the world. Her eyes were bluer than the great oceans, her figure more perfectly planned and built than the pyramids. She was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And I thought I was going to the day we married but God, or whoever is up there had other plans.
And so the train continued to speed through the hills and the green splendour that lay just outside my window. I so desperately wanted to hold it in my hands and breath it in. Consume it. Become a part of it. But the faster and faster it sped past the more and more I felt behind the glass just looking unable to do anything but watch and view it from afar, as if I was a kid and couldn't be trusted, trusted to leave anything in its perfect way. I looked around the train, and saw a man sitting down a few seats away, talking to a skinny, black haired girl. The man looked beat up, deprived of sleep. As though the world had just kicked mud in his face, ridden on it and picked up his almost lifeless body and threw him into this train. "What you doing here Joe?" She said, as she looked at his dark eyes. She looked similar to him, just more clean and a little bit more topped with life. "Where have ya been?" The man looked at her with a frown a took a toke on a cigarette he had kept by his side held in between his worn fingers.
"Just got out of prison, haven't I." As if struck by a revelation the woman inhaled, of course, how could she have forgotten. Embarrassment seemed to flash over her face for a moment, the cheeks which showed no signs of colour before, glowed tinted rose. "It’s alright." He said as he saw the expression upon her face, which she rather clumsily tried to hide as she took a quick glance out of the window. "Much changed in town?" Said Joe trying to cover her mistake. Reluctant she looked back at him and they began the conversation which would take them past the next few stations, discussing the shops which had opened one minute and closed down the next, the change in authority, and how prices of various things have increased. A train ticket for one.
It was when they began discussing a certain event that happened three years ago that I began to prick my ears. The woman started it. “Ya know Joe, it was three years today that that woman went mad and got taken away. You probably don’t remember being in prison and all. They say she went away with a huge fuss. Crying, wailing. Half way down the street they had to take her out and put her in a strait jacket, cus she was hitting her head on the window.” This was untrue, but rather than get in an argument I continued to listen, probably the only soul on the train who knew the truth about that morning. “They say her husband. Agreed with the authorities, just let her go. Twenty years or something married and he just put her in that crazy house. If my husband did that I would escape and chop his fucking balls off.”
This bit was unfortunately nearer to the truth. The way I saw it at the time was that she was mentally unstable, a risk to not just society but me as well. I mean, I had a job a social life, stuff that needed to be done. I couldn’t look after her as well as keeping on top of my life. The next day when I woke it was hard, painful. My heart ached and my stomach imitated it like a mirror laid flat. I didn’t move from my bed that day, and over the next few weeks while I improved from this blow, I convinced myself every morning that what I had done was the right thing. She needed help and I gave it to her. How can I be accused of doing something bad? It was over the recent months I saw change and in my heart I knew that what I had done was wrong.
My mother and father; the perfect couple, until Christmas a year ago. Apparently the argument had been brewing ever since he forget their anniversary in the summer but it came as a shock none the less, when she screamed at him every now and again. At Christmas of this specific year my mother had walked in on my father and her sister, laying both, under the covers in the spare room, she had come home from work early that day, and thought that he was away on vacation. It was after this, after the months of two to three worded phone calls, after tears had been shed and many photos had been burned that my mother, who did love my father very much, forgave him. For better or worse she stuck by him and my mother was a woman who kept her word. The same vowels were made by her son to his wife and he had gone back on this, and sent her away when she needed him most.
And so I waited for the right moment, packed up from work and got on a train. And now I was here.
