Drowning is the Price You Pay
The place memory whitens is the entrance hall
There is a corpse inside each one
a gilded rock we break upon —
a place memory whitens & grows faint
to preserve the rabid assaults
on the child-soul for late dissection.
How many of us landed only to feel outraged?
Are you awake to what’s asleep?
Or am I thrashing around in vain
clumsily looking for words to funnel nuances —
whispers & ephemera to hold the world at bay
like a branch beating a window
looks to come in out of the rain?
Whatever we can’t remember —
those great chunks of blind time
hold the seeds of both healing & future
& always wash up on our shoreline
drag us back to those places
long locked and put away behind
the great sea-wall of life & pain.
Drowning is the price you pay.
Copyright Simon Heathcote