Prayer
If I walked backwards in my own footsteps
I wonder how I would feel at finding me
waiting in Nottingham’s market square
for a black haired, leathered jacketed
Ukrainian. My own blue hair exploding
when we danced our way into each other,
the stack of speakers drowning the day.
Music spilled out through my cracks
like an up surging of spring water
or blood. It was always like that.
We went to the cinema all the time
and one time saw The Unbearable
Lightness of Being and I cried
because I knew that ache.
My reflection would haunt me as
I dodged past shop windows
and bathroom mirrors until one
day I looked and saw a little girl
in shadow, hurting on a bed.
There are no words for this pain.
It is unutterable.
But somehow the act of looking
anchored the inevitable drift of light
and I sink with gratitude into weight.
Such a powerful poem, Diana. Stanzas 1-3 & 5 are especially strong. That isn’t to say that stanza 4 is weak but it’s so heartfelt that there may be too many words. How would it be if you swapped ‘My’ for ‘Its’, cut ‘bathroom mirrors’ and the last two lines of the stanza:
Its reflection would haunt me
as I dodged past shop windows
until one day I saw a little girl
in shadow, hurting on a bed.
Maybe a repetition of ‘hurting’ might emphasise what the last two lines had been saying:
in shadow, hurting. Hurting on a bed.
A really tremendous poem.