The Song

I hear a song in my mind, one that I sing when I am lost, a song who’s words I make up as I go along. I do not recall the words I sang yesterday for they change with each cold breeze that comes my way, there was a song I sang when very young, full of stars and sunshine, and a hope for an end to that phase of my life and to bonds that tied me to mother and the home she caged us in. I escaped into the dark one night, left the sofa and the tv and my parents’ gaze to wander outside and stare up at the stars and sing my song, sweeping away all fears. I was a singer on a stage, in the blackness of the night with an audience I could not see. I don’t remember the words of that song - the words change. I sang my song but was unaware that my siblings sang a song of their own that they could not share, a song that held them tightly bound to each other and warmed them during the coldness of the night, for night brings in terrors that daylight smothers. The tune’s the same.

It is another child, a child of mine that I tried to raise but she hid in her room, I knew she was there though her soul was gone, she wept in silence, cutting lines upon her arms and legs that I could not see. She dared not show how she bled. I know my child but not the adult they would become, the dangers like spirits from the other world seeping through the cracks that they could detect in my song, gathered her up and swept her away for a while ignoring all my tears and fears. Her brother when his time came also hid within his room, lay upon his bed, scanning through images on trading cards collected, exchanged with friends, his world wordless and then when he felt grown he upped and left. I hear the songs again, but the words disappear into the thread of vibrations in the air. 

There is a child not mine that knows no song but drifts in an effervescence of despair, routing past and futures, dancing to a music she can only hear and play, she has always danced this way, a strange contorted mix of swing and beat, and vigorous stamping of the feet, she screams in silence but causes tsunami waves, stirring up the depths of pain and sadness that have been buried in her head. This child I know and know not, a fearful longing to be heard she says but the song I hear is too high pitched to be read. This one is the grieving child, the one that cannot shed the dread that she has been fed from the womb to breast. She seeks comfort in anything that can numb her thoughts and immobilise her brain. She does not hear my song, none do, it changes year to year as age whiles away the tune.

The song I’ve changed again, the words no longer sway my mood, I play the music of my youth instead, recall the words that still reside in memories of freer days, when complications were not the ones I made, not mine to fathom or resolve, wafting around me in a friendless cloud, I was not to know back then that the cloud would stay.  

This song inside my head bears my frame, gives substance to my name, cools my heated forehead, calms the rising fear that comes and goes and threads my life as it has always done, a presence felt not seen. I need to sing this song whatever words I give at the time, perhaps I’ll write it down one day those elusive words that fade like dreams that reveal a life that was led or is yet to be lived. But once written they cannot be changed, cannot feed the soul which craves the nectar of the gods, immortality assured in changeability of the verse, the tune an eternal thread that binds each generation without its consent. 

It is the tune I heard when I held my first born, a wailing of every mother ever been and ever will be, a wailing of misgivings, foreboding and dark visions. I rocked my child in my arms and thought of every child alive, those who had worse beginnings, mistreated, discarded or worse, bred for slavery or drudgery, a life given without thought. This weight I felt within my heart as I cooed sweet lullabies. I sang a song within my head that lulled the fear that spread. 

It is with sheer relief that I hear the warbling of the birds, the serenades that are sung above my head, I wish I knew the words but the songs are not those of mankind, the birds are born with song inbred yet passed on along the line until extinction deletes the song and we forget that they ever lived or sang. There is the cooing of the pigeons that forewarn us of the storm that is brewing, these songs remind me of events, they drift within my consciousness, strip me of the words I would have sung, and carry me away to safer shores. And I still hear the song, my song, within my head, it will not stop until my end, the words evaporate as soon as said, it is with regret that I know I will not remember them again.