Sky Falling

The sun is shining with a cold, false-friend brightness that hurts at the back of the eyes. The sky is a fake, flat blue, everything else is brown and grey. The railway spools its clickety-clack tentacles all the way from one meeting to the next and nothing seems to matter as much as lying down on the bed. Sleep, though, is a cock-tease, playing with me all day then disappearing just at the critical moment. The sheets are too cold, then too hot. Time reels back a year and we’re still in the same place, all of us: pointless in a courtroom with money draining away, driving around the corner and seeing her up in the window, looping the curtain cord over her head and kicking the chair…… Life now, such as it is, forever the jump from the still-moving car, the howl of her name and the running upstairs – over and over and over.  I am always too late to catch her, however many times the film loops its repeat. Always not there when she needed me, always finding her lying still on the floor, lying unconscious in the hospital bed, always too late. Rumer has stolen Karen Carpenter’s voice and asks again and again to be forgiven.  Someone needs to tell that girl to stop singing: there is no forgiveness to be found.