Written by Margaret McDonald |
There is a book
living inside your chest
with dilated instructions
on how to make a safe landing
it was written
for crash landers.
Thank you.
I am coming home to listen.
– In Landscape, Buddy Wakefield.
Hospitals smell like disinfectant and sadness. It was so everything that you weren’t. I jumped up on your bed and you made a small ‘mph’ noise of discomfort, but your eyes were bright even if your face wasn’t. The bed sheets were scratchy. The wires were uncomfortable. I slept curled against you.
And we’re waiting on the hard plastic chairs. After some time, mum crouches down to me. I know even before she says it.
“I’m so sorry, Isla.”
‘Dad?’ My hands say.
And she doesn’t say anything.
I want to shout that I was just with you. I want to ask how. Instead, I push her away. The action feels strange, somehow, as if someone else is doing it. I move to the wall, bring my knees up. I can’t look at mum. I can’t hear myself make a low, raw sound of grief. My voice startles me. I’m making noises when I cry, great, gasping, shivering sobs. They fell, sloppy and uncoordinated. I didn’t want sound, I wanted you.
People never seem to understand. “Why don’t you try to speak?”
It was like asking a blind man, “Try to see. Just try.” They thought it was a choice. I was never given the ability. It was foreign to me, as foreign as another limb. I never knew that limb, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I had ways to live without it.
When I shook my head silently, I wondered if they possibly thought me deaf. A mute shake of the head, as if to say, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ When I actually meant, ‘You don’t understand.’ Silence overtook me like a cancer, a quiescent disease. The sounds of the world exist locked inside. I forgot that people couldn’t hear what I was thinking.
I loved you. You would speak to me, talk to me, laugh with me, laugh for me. There was always something to say. There was always a point of contact between us. Touching is so important for me. It’s something that I spoke. It was how I told you I loved you. My fingers tugging at your sleeve. My small arms around your shoulders. I would fall asleep on the couch, you would carry me upstairs. When I was with you, I could live and not have to think about living.
You took me everywhere. Every good thing in my life was yours. I saw the whole world from your shoulders. We went to the track, and dipped under the fence. Your breath puffed in laughter, I clapped it with my hands which made you laugh more. And then you were running. You happiness stayed, in my palms. After a while I caught up. Suddenly you turned around and trotted backwards. You held your arms open for me.
I sneak out and under, quiet, it’s so quiet. My breath puffs. You never made me feel silent. And I sometimes wonder, if you knew. You caught my hand once, it enclosed mine and yet it was still so small and weak. You told me everything would be all right. I was a child then, and I knew that everything would not be all right. You weren’t lying. You were doing something else. You were being my father.
I’m thinking about cycling. I remember each day as I practised, my distances grew. Each day you would take me out, and day after day I would move further away from you. And you would always put up your hand if I got too far away. I kept glancing, to see if you would. And it was always that act of looking back that would make me fall.
I still glance backwards. I’m still looking for you. I never know when to stop.
My thoughts are drifting. They are going up the sleeve of your overcoat, ruffling the hairs of your arm. Those arms were so familiar to me. I was sure I would have them for as long as I lived. And I did. Even after I lost you. The memory of your arms wrap around me as they used to. And everything else in between. Our knees bumping as you sat beside me. If I cried, you would brush the strands behind my ears, so I didn’t get my hair wet. That was such a fatherly gesture.
I don’t know what the purpose of this letter is. For a while after I had so many things to tell you. And not just in a day. I have years of things to tell you. There are not enough pages.
I sometimes have this dream. It starts and you’re walking backwards. Your feet tug back, your arms swing in opposite directions. And everything we’ve done together rewinds. On the track. You trot forwards and I sprint backwards. You shift around like you’re dancing and we’re side by side. And we’re going back under the gate. Your breath retracts back into your lungs. We’re rushing all the way back to your house. And the door pulls back. We fall inside. The walls protect us. You are safe.
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