We Live in Time
An imaginative/discursive hybrid composed by Darcy (Year 12 Advanced English, MacKillop Catholic College)
Subjects of intimacy have always struck me with uncertainty. I once read a quote by David Viscott that tells us that “to love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” Yet, I don't feel anything, or either side of this ‘sun,’ rather the cold, hollowed touch of wood, and art supplies, and paintbrushes.
“Isn't it beautiful?” a voice behind her right shoulder whispers. A painting. Vicarious at that. Flooded to life with colours of pinks and purple, yellows and oranges. The whole canvas.
“Yes.”
“Her eyes are darted, it's as if she's looking directly at me.” Her eyes truly incomprehensible. Bloodshot, dilated, darkened. Whomever, whatever created her, held great knowledge of humankind itself, but also of passion. Intimacy. Love. Love, this poor little girl, standing alone within the chambers of a free gallery exhibition could not even begin to dream of comprehending. Or so I thought.
This young girl, in her flowered pink dress is one of the only people I have ever seen not just stare, but actually look directly at the painting on the opposite side of the room for more than that of five whole seconds.
“Charis. It's time to go.” a voice so tender and soft mumbles from afar.
Her mother. Soft and gentle.
Oh, to feel that warmth of a mothers love again. As the young girl turns around to face me, her face I am yet to see, everything changes, and truth sets itself in stone against my beating, bloody heart.
Chords, tubes, cables. Cuts, burns, marks. What a beautiful young soul. My heart aches for answers that I myself, cannot even begin to ask. Her eyes are filled with empathy, with happiness. Looking up she smiles at her mother. I see her tear ducts swell and nearly overflow, and yet she smiles back, with all the love this world has to offer. Love I have rejected for all of my worthless life.
I refuse to allow this story to end on such short notice. Perhaps, it's wrong to assume I have the free will to follow and watch the lives of a family already struck with hardship. Perhaps, I can sympathise with myself and reason my only true goal is to feel something once more.
To love again.
In the parking lot, a small Camry, rusted and faded, shares its life with this small family of two. I watch as the mother places her whole heart gently in the back, in the booster seat, adjacent to the windshield, cracked slightly down the middle. Not a word is spoken, and yet, I hear words and thoughts, flying about across the empty street like chants projected from a loudspeaker. The engine roars to life and shudders. In the reflection I see the young girl laugh and smile, perhaps against something cheeky her mother said. How am I supposed to understand the love and happiness that I see when all I can comprehend is the pain?
I once heard that ‘Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.’ I see this thought process in the love this mother has for her daughter. Not through force, but because this little girl in herself is the only thing keeping her alive, aside from the truth brushed under the side of the old carpet-the fact that she is dying.
This home is similar to that of the old run down car in the driveway. Again, unbothered and carefree, the two emerge laughing and giggling. Aware, but unbothered by the problems arising around them in everyday life. The fleeting nature of the time once earned, now preserved in every living moment they share. Under a small brown rock the little girl reveals a key, likely for the front door of the house. She dances in circles with joy at such a mediocre discovery. Her mother laughs and claps her hands in the form of a tune, creating a rhythm the two enjoy a minutes. An everyday task, so minuscule, so greatly impactful in the life of a girl making memories.
What I am yet to discover is that of the absence of the male architect. As the young girl trances in motion a Padlet drops from her left pocket. Without realising, she abandons the piece on her front porch, dashing inside from her mothers call to bake a cake. How riveting.
Silver, tarnished, cheap. How could such junk hold any sentimental value? On the side of the Padlet is a button. When I press it, a ragged tune plays. The Padlet shows a photo of a man. If not for her own presence within the image I would have no truth that this man was her father, yet, somewhere in the deepest darkest part of my soul, I felt it true.
This little girl, without a father.
This mother, without a husband. Without a lover. With a sick, and dying child. How is it possible for someone to still choose happiness when life has stripped away everything they once depended on?
I have never seen such beauty.
My thoughts are interrupted abruptly by a loud and sudden smash. A bowl, perhaps, followed by a piercing scream.
Days pass. Weeks. Months.
From the shadows I observe the torment single souls may never comprehend. Pain and suffering not deserved, but given regardless. Somehow, through the clouded sky of hardship gleams the bright and vivid light of unrequited love.
Dressed in blacks and greys, groups of mourners I don't recognise fill the blank spaces around a small oak tree. At its base lies a miniature, white coffin. Adjacent to the front of the small crowd and thus the coffin itself is a mother.
Eyes I recall once filled with love now stare blankly. Hollowed and darkened. Her grief suffocates the air, perhaps, something to do with the finality which comes as they lower the casket into the earth, as if sealing away all that was, and all this widowed mother ever had.
As time progresses, ever so slowly, rain begins to shed from the skies above and the crowd begins to dissipate. In time, all that remains is the mother, faced now only with a pile of dirt stacked below her waist.
Slowly, in time, the grave begins to build rather a collection of flora and fauna. Each signed and marked by the widow left to rot in her own sorrow each and everyday. Even six feet below, I still feel the pure and tender intention she holds in her soul, somehow, in moments, I feel one side of this sun.
I have always believed that to be intimate with someone else is to hold the closest, and yet most plausible way to truly be in tune with another's soul. No longer do I find that to be the case, for a mother’s touch holds in itself more love than anyone on this accursed earth could even begin to imagine. To see this love, so unfiltered, so strongly ordinary, is to shift everything I once thought I understood about the topic itself. There is no grand gesture. No raging, no pleading, no confession of love in pouring rain on a darkened alley in New York.
No, just the way her hand would steady her back as she leans in to crack an egg. The way she would not only hear, but listen when the child rambled about things that seemed to hold no weight in the adult world but were, to her, this little girl, entire universes. Intimacy, I’ve come to realise, is not built on broken promise, but sacrifice. Its memory, built not from words alone, but actions. Repetition. The brushing of hair. The tender touch of patience in times of anger. Times of sadness. The choice to stay, again and again, when everything else suggested it would be easier to go. And yet, here I am.
Watching. Unseen. Unloved. Untouched.
