flight flight

been away, came back. i am expected to show my experiences, scars and souvenirs, all click and whirr and cheap flights.

for me, it has been an invisible culmination away from the glare of people: a movement towards purpose, focusing sunlight through a magnifying glass. i am merely learning though, the focus of my heat touches nothing and simply fades into the cool subjection of the city’s cool thoroughfares.

against this floor i am a decision, not simply a maker of decisions. decisions do not act upon me, nor murmur behind my back. i cannot call them my decisions. they call me as they wish and this is what i have learned. i have learned to allow and receive, whilst not being satisfied to admire the tessellation of the future tense as it awakens.

so perhaps i will live in the city i have just returned from. perhaps i will stand in its churched squares and be allowed a moment to think alone as the cold howls from foot to rooftop. perhaps i will raise my hand to the back of my neck, think of my profligacy and proficiency, think of the meanings of which i am lacking (not meaningless) and stare at people who are not drawn into a fearful denial of their heritage and education. through the conversation and smoke and open doors, i will sketch a taut proposal of direction and trajectory and achieve the necessary. i will search with eyes and fingers into the expressions of strangers and endure the hopeful, placating disease of contentment.

bound up in perhaps, i am immobile. so where am i left? what decision am i?

i am a return, a vain return full of broken cleverness and jarring warmth. people stare. i have surprised some and hated just as many, but their time is not for me. i need not worry. full of fear and appraisal and shivering timidity, but not worry. lying on a pavement in this city with the leaves and finished cigarettes, but not worry. wind-burnt cheeks and forehead, legs resting upon an old novel, but not worry.

i am trying to gain a sense of place, in order to impart a sense of place. too often i work in reverse and brazenly advertise the inevitable shortfall, the until that devastates every writer, lover and person. this time i shall give no warning of plan.

i’ll be lying down, arms by my side and face in the gutter, before you can say easyjet.