You keep walking into trees. Distracted by what, who can know, your own thoughts are wisps known to evaporate if you try to hold them too tight. It leaves a hollowness that you want (need) to fill, somehow, somehow.
And then you find your hair being stroked
by the hard fingers of branch pulled back by your force
And you duck suddenly and pull a face and look across the road to check for witnesses
But this is London and the man across the street in a thick coat and hat pulled low turns the corner and doesn't even look up
And you realise you've been tilting towards the edge of the pavement almost tripping against the low wall of the front yard
There is something here about contact, about the boundary between self and other
As if your body is testing a hypothesis, given the evidence, of -
The feeling of drowning in syrup in your bedroom, living room, kitchen at home, all of these vacuous spaces that you cannot find a foothold in, mother nagging, sister needing, brother occupying
Everywhere you turn a hall of mirrors haunted house, your own ugly reflection distorted staring back at you, there isn't a place for you here, or, worse, you are invisible, too small to matter, walking through walls, screaming but not heard -
In contrast to
the physical hurt that comes from a kick to the ribs (oh, I'm real. I'm alive)
The branch hitting you in the face, the leaf catching you in your eye
The reminder that you aren't actually a ghost
