Day 135

Pink grasses.

Once there were trees on the shoulder at exit 22.  Now there is just a horrifying absence. My heart lurches past trying not to think.

Once there was a girl with a mother and father and sister and brother and a wonderful dog called Timmy.  Now there are just two sisters and a brother.  There is a gash inside my head which opens periodically.

Once there was a sunny country with many loyal friends.  Now there is a country of extremes.  I struggle against the rip-tide.

Once there was a township school full of black students that I loved and taught my passions of language and art.  Now there is an international school full of privileged students that I love and teach.  I learn from them all.

Once there was an old yellow VW bus, in which many happy times were had.  Now there is a memory of rocks flung through windows and shards of glass cutting my face and hands, stuck in my hair like thorns.  My sense of trust like the shattered panes.

Once there was a wife with a husband who was gay.  Now there are two beautiful daughters.  All three women living on different continents with a small healed fracture of the heart.

Once there was a young beautiful man who was detained in prison for his convictions.  Now his large and loving family has grown and moved.  He still practices the same resilience which saw him through that terrible experience.  He is still beautiful.  And full of light. 

Once there was a happy old stone house called 16 Cross Street, where so many people had walked to and fro that there was a big worn dip in the comfortable old yellow-wood step in the passage.  Now there is a place on Southern Avenue where we four, and sometimes six, who are people from the south, live and love.  Every time I make a wish it is for us all to live in the same country. 

Once there was a firm-breasted soft-skinned prettyish girl, who revelled in her smooth tanned belly, her comely ankles, her intellect.  Now there is a 54 year old woman whose belly has nurtured 4 babies, with lines on her face and a skew smile, who is turning into her mother and her father at once, but who still revels in her body and her brain, which have done her very well so far and which she continues to encourage and congratulate.  But the mirror surprises me every day.

Self-portrait cartwheeling across the world, straddling the distances between us all.