21
the ones left behind
I read that no one really dies we are just energy and energy doesn’t go anywhere can’t go anywhere just transferred into different forms I read that over and over every night for a month for a weak taste of comfort I sometimes got the train to our old place and walked that familiar route past the supermarket we went every Sunday past the donuts shop past takoyaki street food stall I stood outside and took in the scent of what was what would never be again and when I finally got back to my new place alone all I wanted was to slip into greying dreams about you about us and I didn’t want to wake didn’t ever want to wake and still I live only for remembering wind-picked sky there is no cure no moving on like us, this land was once alive no someone else saltless waters there is vast valleys of green there was the old fire beneath the trenches sang its ending only you. night after night in the silent grey of winter and the ground she trembled returning home after seven years abroad those who carried the flames lay under bullets and smoke back in Glasgow and could not hear the wind a skin of myself still in Japan the skin of frost that covered the ground never crawling around old memories melted stretching over the worst years she opened and the silent lonely hours everything that ever was beating dust ever could be my mind sinks 5,763 miles into a former life gone as days, weeks, months keep on rolling death breathed and took all until soon all will be forgotten we listen to that faded echo the store where those memories lie the last to hear will one day close the last to return, my son as will the rest of me to the rot beyond repair as will we all. and here we shall live out the last of our days. waiting on waiting airports put me in a trancelike state as if I’m just returning from another 27 hour journey from Tokyo as if I’m still split between two worlds but my flying days are over and I’m only here to pick up another my mind still lingers in the past of dreams long dead and dying yet here I stand same Glasgow same airport and changed still falling in that habitual trance never to escape.
John GerardFagan
