Thank you, my dear. I'm afraid it's all true.
___________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
Written to the Wind
In your dark time
I was there for you.
In my dark time
you said
'It's partly a D/s thing'
'Me obeying him'
'But it's deeper than that'
'I can't explain'
I found myself trapped inside his iron mask with no voice that you would ever answer
in utter rasping terror. Not just because your boyfriend said so but because you wished it also
Just so you know,
I'd have been honoured
to wish my unique
and cherished friend
her happy birthday nothing else.
No clean break
that was in fact
a bloody amputation
and I would have stayed
kind and loyal, the me you'd loved
while you and I
would be at peace today
no damage done to anyone.
You and I have such a thirst for beauty
It's all we share in common but what a thing to share
and in companionable silence but for early May, in time
we'd have found a quiet magic - one more jewel on your collar
Such concepts were, of course,
far beyond him
You say now that's all beside the point
- that you had full free will
and simply wished me in the trash perhaps so forget I spoke but I still know you better than you think
and I know that's anger and bravado talking.
You were scared and trapped, like me
We had no time to think what we were saying
- still less to cure
the other's misconceptions.
Dear friend-who-was,
please understand:
- just like you
when he left you for Katherine some new humility was needed during our rethinks, but the rest was overflow. For you it took many months of question answer care and patience
I though, had just a week, in which you had no choice except remind me every day about the axe and wooden block that awaited me on failure
You ran out of time and hope - you'd seen I was too ill to win the buried treasure we both sensed lay somewhere in this tangled garden. His Iron Curtain fell on me
while all my wounds were gaping open not one more word could now be spoken obscenity beyond the dictionary cruelty past all redemption
I re-read your last permitted mail yesterday and that's what's made me write all this. before the 'part Ds / part deep reason' you said: '...a combination of worry about you,
one of my best friends and just
general stuff getting me down..."
at the time I naturally thought
that you were worried about me
and anxious for a real friend also you can imagine how I felt
but just perhaps your meaning was -
that's how you still regarded me myself?
If that was your intended thought - if -
it would have changed
absolutely
everything
180 degrees
Your annihilated year
and my annihilated life
would all be down to unclear wording
It's just one more thing I'll never know.
Why's it so important?
Because you wrote it on the selfsame day my inmost soul was terminated:
"I see no reason for this friendship to continue."
Your obedience would have caused me anguish
but not despair and not forever
because deep down
despite the fireforce of extreme depression
I'd have known it was correct and decent -- your obedience that is, not his decision -
Your collar was no trinket
and my duty as a friend
was to venerate its meaning
and offer you support.
It would have been enough, in time
to know, for sure, there'd be an email from you
if you ever left him
and that the silence he had asked for
wasn't what you wanted
but had to be respected my sacrifice a very special gift from you to him
friends come high best friends higher love is highest who denies it?
Such clean and honourable sadness
was not what we achieved. Beneath His Seven Day tick-tock-tick-tock all we had time to give each other was misery mixed messages and panic. We couldn't grow this black rose in one week
What pushed me past all sanity, endurance
was that you yourself seemed to agree
with his assessment - for some deep reason unexplained
that he was quite correct to say I was worth less than a single lungful of your breath. I have twice his gifts as do you I'm worth the air it takes to speak to.
Your betrayal was too monstrous
for me to live with.
Quite literally so.
With time and understanding
we'd have sorted our confusions out.
Six mails each a year?
Ten perhaps? a few more if you wanted? all honestly transparent to him no subversion, nothing underhand
Your once-a-week idea
was sweet of you but way too many.
That was it - sum total of my hopes and needs -
a living person in your inner world
and not dead history.
But as it was, he
"saw no reason to delay" 'although I know I said I'd wait until the 12th'
"as I've now made my decision"
"while she initially wasted her efforts"
"she now echoes my sentiments" 'you can send her one last mail' loyal echoes do you credit he was the man in charge of you you'd asked politely, he'd said No
that's that
as a reason to cut contact doing as you're told is already deep enough for both of us my low ebb made me hypocritical and fear turned me to jelly compelling you to claim redundantly? that it went 'deeper than just that'? so your letter said your heart agreed? no longer a true friend of yours? because I was too crushed, too difficult? now just a worry and a threat? His Guillotine had fallen early So I'd never ever ever understand accept resolve
It was a masterclass in making phantom fears roar into life Just like my masterclass of sending you that hellish story. No escape from purgatory had remotely crossed my mind until you both assumed - I might explode when it dawned on me - have I been conned? Betty Newname? - thank you his insults not enough? my permafrost unknowing was intolerable -
I couldn't walk I couldn't breathe - these are literal not figurative
until the day I echoed in my turn
my sentiments of him obliterating him with equal lack of mercy for his arrogance, self-boasted "narrow mind"
letting you discover to your horror in first person plural now, not merely to some inconsequential other, the devastations of injustice: deprived of any voice at all to answer crushing sentence of a biased hate-filled judge with no appellant court whatever
This enabled me to breathe and walk once more the agony of snakebite justice once mine alone was now shared by three in balanced portion
I found the desert where I've stayed since a poet cut off from his muse disintegrates, does not exist but I'd left the whirlwind
narrow minds miss many things there's scope for pride, and prejudice, disdain, suspicion, common sense they see what's theirs and grip it tight but beauty glory love without condition mystery imagination strangeness discovery transformation sense uncommon are all outside their field of vision
From then until today
I've had recurring
post traumatic stress disorder
which I cannot shake
nor ever will
That countdown to the scaffold
happened yesterday
however many days it is.
Underneath the rubble
I still care
for someone wonderful
truly rare and special
For my muse and inspiration
- which is what you were
until he snuffed me out -
you were the one and only I wanted you for a lifetime friend the first day I met you - the single time that's ever happened
My life didn't revolve round you
the way he thought
It was lit by you
and that's so different.
I loved your journey
loved your wit
loved your energy and passion
loved your submission to your man
loved to think I'd helped in that.
I loved the subtlety and sparkle
of your rich imagination
Yet I was not in love with you
in any ordinary sense -
just entranced, beguiled
proud to know you past the saying
fond of you down to my toenails
an icon, yes
but a good comrade also. He thought it was commonplace attraction to be bludgeoned he was mistaken If he'd said Yes to you with me 4,000 miles away in Turkey many months before disaster when you first asked him for permission
we would have been to one another
nothing but a blessing.
How thrilled you would have been!
To have him give that gift!
A sign of trust at last, at last!
from such a jealous and possessive man!
Worth twelve red roses anyday!
And for me, a perfect life beneath blue Izmir sky!
I can't tell you just how fine that city is the job I had the friends I'd found happier than I have ever been I'd have passed any test my only thought how best to bring you credit my liking and respect for you and the authority you'd given him was settled and sincere heartbreak healing with your warmth and warmth of Asia summer new future all unfolding walks up in the mountains sunrise swims in the gulf of Izmir
But the story had to be
as bad as possible
and hatred must prevail.
This much at least, we can agree on -
The clear pupose of our meeting
was for your life to be deeply scarred
and mine to be destroyed.
So let's shrug at what we did
- ripping care and trust to shreds
and may we find in one another's hurt
some pygmy consolation
For who are we
to think, and learn,
concede our faults
and use our voices?
I know this only:
If I could have been you
for just thirty seconds
I'd understand
why you did what you did
If you could have been me
for that time too
You'd also see
We neither of us
had choice by then poor me poor you The virus
of meanness, smallness
constipated heart
did not have its origins
in either of us
- our wiring
doesn't work that way.
He thought he was being sensible
That I was far away
and not important
my rotting pride could give off methane
all it wanted - so what?
Best to tell me that I'd had my day
and flush me down the toilet
making sure to add
some lip-service at your polite insistence
I don't know your feelings for him now
But do you think that was good sense?
I was the one who rescued you
and it was from him
I did the rescuing.
The innate vileness
of this Kafka nightmare situation
was not lost on you
and though you tried too late
to find solutions
neither he nor I would listen to you.
He mixed fire and water to his cost -
giving a cruel vanilla verdict of
death by everlasting silence,
but from a position of authority
invested by his D/s power that intrinsic mismatch set off Krakatoa. If he'd granted just one single annual smiley on your special day he'd not have robbed me of a past that wasn't his to toss into the landfill this would have been an honourable act and therefore be correct D/s, his uncontested right and due.
Meanwhile I'd shown no compassion
for your quandary at all
lost inside delusions
of King & Master and his bitch-goddess Turkey and all my new happiness had collapsed
I assumed he ruled you with an iron hand the truth of it was better and more complex just like mine is surely you must know that? words heal, let in light silence rots, forms shadow I'd heard nothing for so long I'd decomposed has anyone before me ever had more savage sentence handed down for the crime of having tortured mind that had been tortured by the judge?
and it was just as kafkaesque for you completely trapped, in great duress between a broken man and jealous foolYet none of us were struck by lightning -
despite what you may think.
Fate was cruel but not capricious
The dreadful consequences we received
Were the boomerangs of our own actions
All mankind is of one author
and is one volume
when one man dies
one chapter is not torn out of the book
but translated to a better language
and every chapter must be so translated.
No man is an island, entire of itself
any man's death diminishes me
because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee
It's a shame he didn't know this
and thought a man
is worth a week
diminishing both him and me
It's a shame I didn't keep
my dignity and courage
even through hell's seventh circle
so you'd be proud of me, respect intact
throughout my trial, and after verdict
It's a shame you didn't tell him
when he first asked to come back
that I'd stay treasured as your friend and writer
for then your story
would have been transformed forever
into a better language
___________________
Grippingly beautiful, even in its profound sadness.
I truly hope it is of your imagination and not of your own experiences.
simon_lowrie:
