Inkblot memories

 

And I sink through inkblot daydreams,

voids of black seeping over

pristine white paper. Stained pages.

I seem to fall for ages, unable to feel

a memory, or taste a momentary beat

of the heart I heard once in a melody,

just falling deeper into darkness.

All I was...

lost

to the fluid black walls that consume.

 

I've forgotten how to be,

how to breathe, how to smile,

how to mask the part of me that wails.

I've failed to memorise the lines

of my own tale, and now it is sailing

into the expanse,

and I'm a waving figurine.

A mannequin of pieces,

left stranded on an island

in the middle of a deepening sea.

 

And the ground opens up

and I'm sinking even deeper,

the inkblot dreams seep nearer,

like I'm in quicksand

and the fear is

pulling me down quicker.

 

And I wonder

what it is I am scared of?

What is it that terrifies me so?

I've been to rock bottom,

with only my shadow for company,

and a greased ladder to climb,

and instead

I swung from vines,

I dug my fingernails

into the slime,

pulling myself

inch by inch

closer

to the beautiful sunshine.

 

So where does my fear lie?

 

And I stare inside

at all the new connections,

the sizzling thoughts,

no longer overwrought

with self-loathing,

now instead I lay out

smooth oceans flowing gently.

I see the mask in fragments at my feet,

and think that was never me.

And I never memorised my tale

because the lines were

always being written

in the most beautiful

fountain pen handwriting,

so instead of memorising,

memorialising, I was living them.

 

And I taste the air

in big flavoursome lungfuls,

and I look at myself,

skin and bone, home.

And the inkblots

become words

upon the page.