Racing backwards

Racing backwards: the shape of a life

Racing backwards through the night in a clattering train, somewhere in Holland.

He winds down the train window and flicks the crushed cigarette packet out into the swift night air.

Startled, slack-faced at the irreversibility of it, he realized he had her number written on it. 

A WREN,

like him – caught up in a war;

like him – drawn and attracted;

like him – lost now to that possible future,

lost to the warm kiss of re-encounter,

resuming the unexpected ease eye to eye,

the unfurling possible.

So much went out the window:

- My chance never to have existed.

- His chance to have been loved

differently,

to find in love, more solace than he did.

Fugitive, as he was,

always -

from an unpleasable father.

Guilty:

for not having been the one to die

when his younger brother did - aged 9,

his childishly small fishing net never disposed of.

I never knew he even had a brother til he told me this story the last time I spoke in the flesh to him

How long to hold that?

How deep must that guilty furtiveness have burrowed?

The shape of a life, like a scrunched up foil and cellophane cigarette packet

(no filter)

hurtling through the dark

landing somewhere

unknown and unknowable,

until he could speak it.

Not all at once,

but a life in short gasps;

late at night

when I would come in

and have tea with him

at the green formica table

As he wrestled with night-shift, jet-lag,

Or wrestled to console me

when I would weep,

disconsolate and inconsolable

over a maths’ problem

The solution became clear through my tears and he

filled with consternation, helplessness and wonder

would marvel at this –

where had I come from?

That cipher was our link

and the stories flowed

stolen cheese melting and smelly in the air vents as the heating came on in a mine-sweeper in Greenland

and a picture of him, all young drunk vacancy, on the toilet…

and the cigarette-packet love…

Did you fancy her? I asked

“Aye”

He looked then

As he must have

When it first went out the window

That chance at another life.