My life is bound by – I’m sorry, I forget… blank rectangles of layered brick. Sometimes I find an opening, but dare not pass through, for fear of losing my way back. Those I live with – their faces are clear and familiar today, though sometimes each greeting is a new and frightening encounter, and their names come and go like a mental extraction, fugitive caterpillars in word salad –
I’m sorry, where are you taking me?
The moments of lucidity are worst: you babytalk to me, telling me patiently what I know perfect well today, though yesterday and tomorrow may be jam-less –
have we had tea yet?
– and try to teach me new ways to suck… those things you tap with teaspoons?
But I remember you: we built sandcastles at Camber – no, I’m wrong, you were someone else’s child.
My life is bounded by – yes, of course, walls, I know – and sometimes I long to pass through an opening and rest there, at peace in my yesterdays.
I debated with myself for some time as to whether this is a prose-poem or miscellaneous prose, but I sometimes read it at poetry readings and no-one has objected yet. Written as a writing exercise in 2006 – as was Teleworker – when for some reason the NHS offered, to some of the people it was about to discard, the opportunity to take part in an online writing workshop. I guess my mind turned to something a lot more frightening than redundancy.