Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester
wolves aren’t real
She said it with the smooth-shouldered arrogance of youthful certainty. At first, I wasn’t sure I heard her right. I asked her what she said and she calmly reasserted – Wolves aren’t real.
wolves arent real daddy
but you have seen them before
yes but they arent real
She dismissed my argument that Canis Lupus, is in fact a real thing. She dismissed it with the wrathful contempt that only a child can muster. I was left confused and more than a little doubtful of my own sanity; my eclectic collection of neuroses grew by one item that day.
i long for the lost days of my youth
my eyes were not yet veiled by the bitter smoulder of time and responsibility
before my self was corroded by disappointment
and the cruel malice of regret
i am no longer young
She is as ideologically promiscuous as a failing politician, desperate to win just one more election. She speaks with utter conviction, even when she contradicts herself. She recognises the contradictions when they are pointed out and simply shrugs. Today’s Cora is not the same as Yesterday’s Cora and my failure to understand the distinction is just that – it is my failure.
Vituperative words are spoken regarding my knowledge of the world or perhaps the lack thereof.
dial it back a step, champ. You go too far.
She apologises but still refuses to accept that wolves are real.
i have a photograph of you, sweet child
at colchester zoo
standing in front of a window
behind you, there are several wolves
and you are smiling as you watch them
My heart can barely contain the love I have for her and when she turns those dazzling eyes to me, I can see the fire burning behind them. She is as bright and fierce as the sun, and I am immeasurably proud of her. Her excited voice can paint pictures with words, pouring from her at the speed of hope but she cannot find a shoe when it rests closer to her foot than her knee. This distresses her and the joyful mood is pierced by anxious tears.
You will carry with you
All the things that I have given you
Sweet and bitter things
I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it
Though I tried
To keep the bad parts to myself, they slipped past me while I slept
And dreamed of being a better man and father
You will carry with you
My faults and all the things I could not catch
As they fell, you picked them up,
And I couldn’t stop you
Though I tried
To keep you from pain that you will feel because of things I didn’t know I’d done
While I imagined being a better man and father
You will carry with you
The love and hope that I feel
When I look into your eyes
And see myself reflected in them
Though I tried
To hold on to every second of every memory, I will forget some
When I felt like a better man and father
You will carry with you
The spark of hope that sustains me
As I watch you play and run
While I prayed that you would be a better person than me
Though I tried
To do the best I could, I didn’t really know how
To be a better man and father
You will carry with you
So many beautiful and terrible things
The best and worst parts of me
You will hold your head higher than I ever could
Though I tried
To have strength of my own, you let me borrow some of yours
And made me a better man and father
I wish that I could raise you free from trauma, but some things are passed by blood and take root despite our best efforts to thwart their growth. You will learn to deal with it. Like me, you won’t have a choice. (That isn’t true. You will have a choice. Master your demons or become them. Granted, it is not much of a choice, but of the two, you must choose one).
wolves, she says, don’t live in our world.
ah! she concedes a point!
Our World is a recent development that encompasses her knowledge of the physical sphere in which she exists as the gravitational centre. Dinosaurs no longer live in our world. Granny and Grandad do live in our world, but they live in a distant part of it separated by a vastness of space so great that it takes a mind boggling five hours to drive across. Our World is a demarcation of the immediacy of Her World. Things and places from which we are isolated become a wispy dream the farther away we are from them.
The questions come, as endless as the universe. Each answer spawns another question and the cycle will endure, until I feel a bit like Dresden in February of 1945. I answer them all until the blowtorch flame of her attention is refocused elsewhere. She wants to know so many things, primary in her mind is the most glorious question of all – Why?
I never want her to stop asking questions, even when I desperately need her to stop asking questions.
there is a place/somewhere in the space between us
that contains all the words we haven’t said to each other yet
somewhere in that space/one day in the future
you will know how much i love you
you have been the making of me
It is what it is because if it wasn’t, then it wouldn’t be.
She looks at me, confused.
Don’t worry. It’ll make sense one day.
____
Michael is a mature student studying Creative Writing at Teesside University. He is currently working on his first novel ‘The Solace of Still Water’ as well as a short collection of poetry.