Little looks up to Big and Big never looks down, Little looks up to Big until it turns big. Little is now big on its own, Oh, little how a little big you’ve grown. You recited that once for me, when I swaddled you with my words, now your defiant in your silence, coloured shades you once tucked away for safe keeping, lie away from you, the pink in the lens split by a solid crack. You know, my suit is tattered and worn the from the oath I took, things said, things sworn. For your protection and provision, I bore and was born, The defeat of my goals and merits and now you shall inherit, All. And with all the gall you put on your own super suit. Did you know? Did you see? Could you identify my real identity? Further away did you know it was me? My true form no less, below yours, the gleam of your suit my eye and the cold bitter storms. Unbelievable now you’ve grown and formed. why are you beautiful and I deformed? Did I wish for this without me? To see my own decay, my own inadequacy. Little, you have flourished where I have failed, Little does now, and makes big frail. I cared once, I really did but once the mask slipped, it slid. down into your own hands the true hero, number one even though it befalls zero. Swaddling cloths are gone now, I cant be your friend, foe. I can only be the burn rather than the warmth. Your own enigma. I show you who I am, my true form. Now come, try to defeat who made you. This villain, desert all your feelings as your driven. Be my foe as you are my villain Forget anything, everything I’ve given. I was never a hero little, I was only your hero, and you chose what you saw.
I don’t remember the last time I saw you before I left. But I don’t think any of it matters – I mean what’s a goodbye? When we share so many secrets. Those living scenes that beat and breathe, those are the things I remember, and it’s there my allegiance to our past lies, they are what came last when I last saw you and they are what comes first when I think of you. Back then when you had spoken, I held my lips at a single point and my voice died. The rising, bubbling heat reduced to a simmer. I had hoped to have had something to say, that the words would shoot out of me like bullets. What to say, what to think, how to console you, how to console myself. But instead, there was a vacuum between you and I. Between your words that I heard and the nothing I said, the vacuum existed in that hour to hour of the noon, and I want to reimagine that it was silent, but your eyes and your mind made noise, mine remained silent. Can you imagine what it felt like? What it felt like when the words seem to fall away from you, in a terrifying sense maybe you could, but what about in an average sense? My potential for words has always been the same human mediocrity – a point on a graph, an axis, a simple standard. But to lack even tart empathy and the slick, oily flattery the kind that makes your tongue go thick. To think even those words had escaped me is likened to death in my mind, and I suddenly realise that I was also in danger, to acknowledging the steadiness of the cold gusts in my heart. I sit back now and the gusts frolic and wrestle behind me, they no longer rattle my ribcage or injure my spine, and I know now that you didn’t need me to be more, to be a hero with words. You needed me to say something. Did the nothing hurt more that the broken rulers edge? Was I a numbered slash a cut serialized and memorised, I remember thinking that they were scratches until I realised they were not superficial cuts, not empty marks pressed into the flesh but they were wounds of war and prison, a sacrificial mark – why were you giving yourself up?
Why was I leaving?
I think I just met the happiest person in the world!” I remember exclaiming to myself, as a child I understood something of the great discovery I had made and how it must be met with controlled expressions, submissive, hiding feelings. But, as I child I didn’t ponder before I reacted and so I did away with submission after all hindsight had not been explored in my 4’11 prepubescent mind. I ran into my room and exclaimed it to myself proudly, jumping up and down with my shoes still on. Truly a discovery for the ages, and it completed my book. See for the whole of the summer of 2010 I dedicated myself to my self-made book. ‘In the world’ a book of searching, and its aim: to find all those who could be finished off with that sentence, according to my practical and fair guidelines in my use of observation. And so, I carefully wrote down a single name and a double-barrelled surname making sure to mindfully dictate to myself through carefully sounding it out. You see Mum had given me an old binder that she didn’t use anymore but she only allowed me to take a handful of paper from the printer to fill it. She threatened punishment if I took any more, she foreknew my need for the perfectly written title in my purple sparkly gel pen which often very sporadically would stop working. when there was clearly ink still inside! As I wrote in my best cursive the same one that got me an hour of writing with Mrs Tether’s fancy fountain pen, the same pen mum said no to in the store because it was too expensive, yes in that cursive my words would stop short of their final form the ‘l’ in ‘world’ was now written in invisible ink with just its indent on the page as evidence. So, in a fit of frustration I would ball up my paper tightly my face would mirror its scrunched-up form in my fist even going as far as to rip it to shreds for extra measure, this happened frequently enough that a once bountiful load was now 6 measly sheets of paper. To which I carefully pierced using the binder’s rings concealing it inside and hiding any evidence of my anger under my pillow. Often, I would take the binder and with my back straightened and it under my arm I would pose observing myself in any profession where I was a ‘big girl’, observing what I became in my imagination was fun, I really was everything and everyone. I peered at the name written before me my face engulfing the whole page, like I almost wanted to find any secrets it held, resisting the urge to caress the letters with my fingers for fear of the gel smudging, I pulled back now the binder lay flat on the floor of my room in my eyeline to which I smiled staring at a secret no one else could have, and no one else could know because I had it. I considered blowing on it periodically to make the wait go faster but my sense of accomplishment held fast to me and I soon realised there was no rush. How amazing that all of them lived on my street! Could I tell the news? Would they pay me? Imagine if they gave me £100 then I could buy anything! I’d be a big girl and have lots of money like Mum and Dad. Dry, I finally flicked to the first person simultaneously putting my hand over the name as to not spoil the reveal, everything was final and I could unmask them now, they would be discovered by me again but with fresh eyes, final eyes because they were now complete. I swipe my hand away but then squeeze my eyes shut. Not ready. Why does my body do things before my mind is prepared! I begin to open my eyes trying to delay the process, but it results in my eyelids fluttering uncontrollably as I pretend to not see, legibility becomes illegible as my eyelashes cover a portion of the words moving like a propeller to an engine, I work hard to delay the moment, I want to be in the dark for a second longer but I want to see, finally I open my eyes and I see:.. Nothing. Because this is where that memory ends, as an adult now I made a more discovery I didn’t make before; about me in the world. In the world I take handfuls of emotions they are not my own, but allocated to me, but there’s no fight in me, I’m an adult now, not a child. Statement or reminder? The people I gave my summer to in 2010 have been stolen away into an abyss of my own making, in the world I found my body continued to do things before my mind was able and ready. I grew, I transformed, I morphed and moulded and I don’t know. Now I forget too, now when my binder is under my arm I don’t pose, my chest puffed with air, I exhale. I release nothing because air is nothing and, in this world, nothing holds fast to me anymore, even my own breath willingly longs to escape me so I exhale frequently I give in. I decided that was a decision I was going to make. 2010 is still with me I suppose if I walked into that year, that summer I could inhale and relieve my body to her, to me of 2010, I’d be her exoskeleton. a piece not a part, parts are whole. I would in each area of her, and I wouldn’t follow her around like something unfamiliar, I wouldn’t have to watch and imagine. My mum’s binder, printer paper, purple sparkly gel pen, and ‘in the world’ I discovered I arrived too soon, and I wonder must I be here?
