Butterflies, Canal Banks and Bikes

I wish I were a child still so I could ride on your shoulders investigating tree branches feeling the safest of safe exploring all kinds of places. Because, my god, growing up is a ball ache. I rarely ever feel truly safe: didn’t think I’d be facing unemployment at the age of 28. Time’s come and gone so quickly –from learning to ride a bike with stabilisers, parents on either side, to managing dysfunctional workplaces –it’s clocked up so hastily –just as we’re all picking up our paces we’re bracing ourselves for lockdown. Leaving us jobless without basic income without a clue with only confusion knowing where to go next.

So can I just ride on your shoulders? Exploring with no risk of harm. Only for a short moment. Trailing fingers below oak trees calmed by their gentle breeze.

Like anyone, I’m trying all the time to be something –even some thing considered only half-all-right would do: 18 grand a year so I can afford my food but it fails.

Putting me in the 400,000+ queue for Universal Credit. So I’m wondering, as life flutters by, how am I going to feed myself and two cat lives?

A butterfly landed on my head last night: maybe things will be alright.

I’m told it’s a good luck charm.

Dusk had set in and my old friend the moon was hanging high a toothful laugh in cornflower skies. But I’m alone while trying to figure all this out. Powerless to it all. Everybody is. So I let my anxiety go find joy in the alloy wheels of my bike taking me places I wouldn’t have time to explore otherwise: canal boats bobbing into each other while kids smoke spliffs, flouting. I beam at cherry blossoms and buds sprouting in springtime and the sun coaxing my freckles out.

The season of growth while we’ve been paused – furloughed. I want to scream at this new freedom.

A warm breeze simmering me down found on these two wheels reminding me that I’m still so childlike.

So could I just ride on your shoulders to see what’s really going on? Like before you had your arthritis and before I ever felt alone. Or should I let those times go?

Because now we hide our tears as we speak through phone screens. You tell me, too, about time, with its wings; the jet plane that took it all away, is how you always phrase it but we’re here now, I say and I’m going to make this situation work. Even if that means fruit picking till autumn. I won’t sink to the bottom of that canal –I’ll keep riding along its banks, Hold on to the butterfly that landed on my head last night and that maybe Maybe things will be alright.

Cleo Asabre-Holt

1 April 1992 –23 December 2022

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