Final Poem

between christmas & new year i like to imagine everyone else elsewhere
flatmates gone lovers folded into other bodies cities running on skeleton staff
the streets near my house emptied out like a mouth after shouting
no taxis complaining no pubs leaking noise
just the cold making its own decisions on parked cars
i wake up already spent
chronic fatigue after the surgery
not metaphorical not poetic
actual weight
like someone filled my limbs with wet sand
while i was asleep & left a note saying be patient
my face is still changing
one cheek learning gravity faster than the other
my mouth arriving late to its own expression
asymmetry isn’t just cosmetic
it’s how the days land
how effort goes out & doesn’t come back the same way
there are books everywhere
on the floor on the radiator by the bed
stacks of thought i meant to enter
i want to read them all
the wanting alone takes the afternoon down with it
i am writing a book
i say this out loud to check it’s true
i write lying down i write sitting against the wall
i write because i can’t lift much else
because if i don’t mark the hours they’ll start pretending they never existed
because recovery erases its own evidence if you let it
outside it’s that dead time
the calendar shrug
the bit of the year no one takes seriously
even the sky looks provisional
i keep thinking about love like a machine
something loud complicated undeniable
belts grinding pressure building heat
i don’t want reassurance
i want to be processed
i want to be pulled into the system & made functional by proximity
instead everything feels manually adjusted
how much i give
how much i hide
how much imbalance i accept as intimacy
how often i pretend this tilt is natural
some days i trace the incision lines
like i’m checking a map someone else drew
some days i miss the person who thought becoming would be clean
that pain would behave
that bodies cared about our deadlines
between christmas & new year no one asks for updates
no one wants progress
this is where things get weird
where you can sit very still & feel your own life humming
like an appliance left on in another room
i walk outside & the pavements feel slightly wrong
concrete meeting moss at odd angles
trees leaning like they’re tired too
nothing symmetrical enough to trust
i love anyway
i love unevenly
i love from bed
i love with the energy i don’t yet have
love doesn’t arrive balanced
it just arrives or it doesn’t
sometimes i want to disappear into it completely
no outline no edge
just noise & heat & function
just being held together without explanation
between christmas & new year
i am unfinished & visible
still breathing inside a body that refuses to conclude
this exhaustion is not personal
it feels inherited
like something passed down through centuries of mouths
that learned how to stay shut
i write this so it can’t be softened later
so no one calls this resilience
so no one says it was beautiful
the streets go mute
the books watch me fail to open them
my face keeps moving without permission
i continue without faith
without balance
without a clean ending to offer anyone
an older spirit joins me
oh goodnight oh good afternoon
oh good rest
& vivid dreams.

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WRITTEN BY: P. ELDRIDGE

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