patiencewrites

[patiencewrites]

The Choice

A baby coos at their mother from it's buggy on the underground train,

A vision of our future takes hold and with it

A warm spread of light coursing through my body, whisperer "let's do it, lets start a family."

I wake up on Sunday with sleep in my eyes, you're already awake.

"What does today hold?" I think as you smile at me with nothing but together stretching ahead of us.

Get the bus to our favourite coffee shop, walk through the market, sit in the sun-drenched garden with our beloved pets.

"You are my family" I catch my self saying as the warm light takes me over again, but this time it comes with vision of us doing this

for the rest of our lives, with endless possibilities and certainty ahead.

The light is replaced with the fire of fear,

A fear of loosing who we are, a fear of disturbing the peace and sanctuary we have worked so long to build

with a third member.

Is what my body and mind wants at war with one another? Or is it normal to be scared and still follow through?

Which will I regret more? Never getting to meet you or meeting you and missing the life we had before you arrived.

Why does everyone seem so certain, when the choice will change our lives forever?

I'm not certain, and I don't know what that means,

Where are the people who aren't certain but still make a choice?

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[patiencewrites]

I cry every time I leave my parents

Almost twenty-eight and I often still feel twelve in your presence

I never had much patience

Running from one place to another but when I leave you time stops for a moment

The monuments weight of all those years apart takes over like waves of rejection

I don't dare imagine what home was like without me there

What time you all ate dinner and what you spoke about while passing the peas, please

But when I sit next to you in my adult body and watch you laugh at the same movie I'm laughing at

The acceptance and joy I feel almost makes the tears when we part worth it

I wonder if you cry too, or if my absence all those years is just a simple fact to you and not emptiness

I wonder if you too think what my days were like, what I ate for dinner, if I too had peas.

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I hate you for what you did,

And I miss you like a little kid.

-Phoebe Bridgers

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Satisfied

Why is it that even when we have a good time,

A happy time,

I'm still left feeling a little empty.

Like I'm still reaching for a deeper connection.

The surface has been scratched but I yearn for more.

I wish I could just be satisfied with our happy moments,

But something's missing. I don't know when we lost it.

- Patience, September 2023

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“Give people time. Give people space. Don’t beg anyone to stay. Let them roam. What’s meant for you will always be yours.”

— Reyna Biddy

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clown cat

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Simple

A happy simple tune comes on, one I haven't heard in maybe a decade.

Unstoppable tears rush up from my chest, clogging my throat as I'm punched in the gut with memories of you,

Helping me practice for my singing audition, belting loudly similes beaming, mum and me in our little dinning room.

My tears feel like mourning but you're alive and well,

It's just been so long since we've been that way.

I miss the simple happy moments we used to have, I know they were rare but before I went away at 12 they were more common than I ever realised.

I couldn't appreciate it then as I had no idea that these sunny simple moments would be so scarce.

Your humaneness feels so clear to me now and it makes my heart ache.

It's your first time living this life too and I'm so sorry for forgetting that.

- Patience, September 2023

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- j (x)

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a place for dreaming

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Dad.

"I regret it."

The words thick in the air making it hard to breath but I silence myself,

Squash my screams out of my mind and into my nerves, allowing my mind to sing clearly with reassurance:

"Regret and guilt are no good, you have to let your self move on" rolls out of my mouth.

My fingers are on fire and my stomach sick with the smoke of disbelief,

The feeling of worthlessness you once inflicted on me comes back to me now,

Prickling my skin like spitting oil, my nerves singing as I involuntarily silence myself.

I've waited my whole life to hear you say those words, to feel complete again,

To expel a sigh so strong at the relief to hear I wasn't a sickness to be cast out,

that the strongest mountains tumble to ruble.

To feel the gates to your compassion and understanding fly open and to be able to look you in the eyes and say:

"I can't believe it. I've waited my whole life to be able to tell you what you did to me and for you to know it. Not to blame you, but to move on."

But I don't move on. In stead I feel my feet sink deeper into the concrete of our history,

Where I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel in which I spot my self telling you how I feel,

Letting you see all of my pain and you wrapping me up and not letting your ego get in the way,

But it does, it sits between us like a needle with the sharp end pushing further into my skin,

The closer I get to you.

Why couldn't you save me then?

Why couldn't you keep me close?

Why was I so hard to love?

But you regret it all now, and you wish you had been a better dad, but you're working on it now.

"it's never to late to work on yourself" I hear my stupid mouth say allowed.

But what am I meant to do now?

- Patience, August 2023

[patiencewrites]

The night rests against the balcony door   -   Leif Engström ,  2023.

Swedish, b. 1992  -

Oil on canvas,    253 x 230 cm. frame.

[patiencewrites]

Here to stay

The rusted cobbles and copy and pasted houses

Beds of roses guarding spiky green and yellow lawns

Where you watched me riding my bike

Where I saw you come home after your third war without a memory of you being gone

And now the war sits within me, the wretched feeling

The familiarity curdles with the fractured here and now

Thorns in every word and breath piercing the past

An image full of pin pricks like a beautiful night sky full of holes instead of stars

Like the war that site within me, that wretched feeling here to stay

- Patience, June 2023

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The eye of a needle in my ribs

I forget to write because I forget to feel,

A delicate balance tip toeing on a blade of grass, Between living a life without rocks chained to my ankles and forgetting to speak to myself.

To look beyond the mirror and give myself a chance to breath a painful breath,

A needle in the ribs. Breath long enough

But not too long

And the needle softly dulls and slips away but always with the promise of finding its way back home nestled in my rib cage if I forget to, for another word,

Feel.

For when I suck the air into my lungs and allow myself to look through the eye of that needle,

I witness the breaking and the crumblings of my own origin,

A mother and fathers hands unlocking before myself but with child's eyes. Eyes sobbing lonely, lonely tears,

That touch an earth already dried, parched from

neglect.

I try not to linger, but in my imbalance I forget to breath

I forget to write as I forget to see myself whole.

- Patience, June 2024

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[patiencewrites]