The ache of my spine: an edit

I broke my spine today, or at least it feels as though it were today. It makes all the things I used to do almost impossible, especially getting about to all those important appointments, here, there and nearly always via bus. Things don't look so professional when you roll determinedly to your morning meeting with the clipboard clumsily masking-taped eighteen times around your chest, for fear of loss. Yes, my spine was quite vital in enabling the performance of those daily tasks I used to have. It supported my whole being. It arched neatly upon request.

I'm in the living room now, there are high ceilings and some generic family portraits and a thin veneer of dust upon the little tables near the lounges. The room is rather big and so my thoughts are uncontained, they float around through the doorways and across the beige painted walls. The silence hits, the inaudible engulfs. It dawns on me that not only is my back snapped, or my spine, or whatever, but my ribs feel dismembered like confetti. The organs underneath are robbed of that fundamental, drumming beat, a snare against the left hand side.

How did I do it? A hammer split the chord, short and sharp. He held it a little uncertainly at first; tapping gently across my white, pale skin as if testing the waters. Then he mustered all his might, heaved a little, and thrust it down until I shattered.

The Reality of the Thing
When I close my eyes and the domestic surrounds dissipate, there’s a city of clouds (both layered and convective) ready to embrace. The air will inevitably absorb all that water hanging about and the mixture, in all its brilliant parts, will rise to the heavens. And yet it’s your face that usurps my attention, emerging ugly from the mass of frozen atmospheric crystals and pasting itself over my eyes. It’s your face (stretchy skin, pulling taut). It’s the carving of our names; it’s the shatter of my spine. It’s the birthday gifts in tidy bags. It’s the checked shirt; it’s the collared tee. It’s the nightly runs. It’s the quips and wit. It’s the last thing I think of. It’s slowly and it’s surely. It’s all the words I’ve ever written, all the letters planned. It's you smashing at me with your bright new hammer. It’s the shredder turned to maximum. It’s the whiteout in my hand. It’s the wetness on the cheek. It’s the pounding in my ears. Yes, it’s all these reverberations. They’re getting louder, indistinguishable. I want to cut off my ears, or blast them empty. Van Gough did that didn't he?

I want to dive until I'm dry, I want to shred off my skull. Unfortunately that would prove a little difficult, since I can barely move my shriveled, fetus-like figure off this infernal living room rug.




A slightly edited version of The Ache of My Spine was published in conconversation, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music publication, in Issue 2, 2011.