The Space Between the Snow and the Sparrows
After a tiresome trip, I made it back home for Christmas. I had not been feeling it this year, if I am being honest with myself. I would gaze at Christmas markets of various cities, play my most dearly beloved Christmas songs over and over again, sit by the waxy light of numerous candles, eating clementines at uncertain hours of the night - and still, no wonder, no excitement usual for this time of year would bloom within me. Is this what stepping into adulthood means? I had asked the Moon the other night. Feeling time slip through my fingers like grains of sand and blindly accepting it, no longer capable of catching the way they sparkle in the sunlight? The Moon did not answer me - it had been a long time since he had seen the Sun. Still, I comforted myself, going back home would change things - I would fall into my father’s arms, I would see the Christmas tree in my childhood home, and I would remember then what the magic used to taste like. But, watching the forests and the highways beyond the bus window lead me closer and closer to the borders of the familiar, all I could think of was there is no snow. Vicious rain and wailing wind, yes. But no white to battle the grey of skies, no footprints of fawns on its pillow-soft surface. The bland remains of Autumn grass stretching over the fields reflected perfectly what I had been feeling as of late - my mind aware of the approaching holidays, holding onto images of picture-perfect Christmas Eve dinner tables and childish shrieks of joy coming from somewhere within the piles of crumpled gift-wrapping paper. My heart, however, chose to wander other, snowless times, not ready and too late for the holidays at the same time. It is not just the snow, then, I thought, although in that moment, praises, more extensive and numerous than usual, were already composing themselves in my mind for the climate change activists. I am longing for the holidays. But what I really mean is the holidays, ten years ago.
When coming back home from school meant not only children’s story books and making bracelets out of colourful beads, but opening the little window of my advent calendar.
When I would religiously watch each part of Home Alone, playing on the third channel every Saturday evening for the whole of December, even though I only truly liked the first two parts.
When my grandparents were here.
When hot cocoa tasted more like lush chocolate and whispered miracles rather than mere sugary powder.
When there was always snow, and, ignoring mum’s suggestions for an extra sweater, dad and I would run outside to build snowmen and throw piles of moon-kissed snowflakes at one another, and it would get under our sleeves and behind our collars and that was okay because our laughter was warm enough and the stars saw everything.
I look at the snowless world behind the window now, and fear more than wonder what awaits in the future; long more than remember what I had left in the past.
But then, stepping off the uncomfortably warm bus, I see my mother running up to me from the car with arms full of greetings and love. I feel the wind pinch my cheeks, and my nose takes upon a familiar, gentle rosy tint. I hear the high-pitched yet solemn discussion of the sparrows who had dared to stay on a nearby tree, waiting out the cold months within the skeletons of bare branches. They tell me, you can never go back, you can never go back,
You can cling and weep and linger in rooms that everyone else has already left, but you can never go back.
But, if you listen, you can feel the heart of this moment stirring the air, thrumming a melody just as the one within your chest.
But right now you can hold in your palms what you will one day, too, be reaching for.
But we, although sparrows now and deities before and memories after, are here, always here, and we are singing, just as we always have.
To-Remember, Rather Important
This Winter,
Take care to mend your great pains
But let the little pains remind you:
You must rest. Curl into a soft old blanket and sip your tea while it is still much too hot and, in these darkened days, seek the light of candles, the dim glow of TV. If you close your eyes, it will almost feel like the Sun
Any small wound as such can be kissed away
In the plums of your bruises there is tenderness, in the violets under your eyes blooms softness. For we are tender in our hurt, and soft in our tiredness, and does that not feel like it means something?
To feel the papercut you got when wrapping presents is, too, a gift
If you are going to bruise your knuckles or scrape your knees, you might as well savour the mischief on your tongue. Add too much sugar to your coffee and twirl around your room until you feel dizzy and maybe tell a little lie every once in a while
The cracks and crevices of your body are not to be mindlessly sewn together
Instead you must wait, wait patiently until they are discovered and filled with love, with benevolence sweet and sticky like honey, until they overflow
Another’s or your own
This Winter,
Listen to your heart hum the song of longing
For someone you swore you would not miss
And let yourself think about them
Perhaps a little more than you should.
A Quick and Simple Guide to Places to Seek Love In
In bookstores, where the countless old love poems can be held in your hands, can be read as promises
In the Moon, who looks down at you with the silent kindness of a mother
In early mornings, when the hours are painted blue and there is no one else awake, yet you find the world right there, holding itself up for you
In your body, because despite your protests, it wakes up each day unfailingly
In oranges, as the sweetness they have gathered throughout their life blooms momentarily on your tongue
In silence, in unsaid words that are too great for a tongue to handle, and can be sensed by a heart only
In strangers, whose hearts, however distant or concealed, beat the same rhythm as yours
In the symphonies of birds, who have remained to face winter,
Because the things that matter will remain,
Their voices calling yours to rise along
In the Sun, who sets these days at an obnoxious hour, yet does not fail, upon her departure, to paint the sky for you
And when it seems as if you have reached the edge of the world, seeking, when you are so tired your knees give out beneath you and you crumple onto the soft snow,
Whisper your words of love into the abysmal darkness and wait, and wait
The stars will come out to remind you
That it is right there, all of it, it exists for you
Bowing to your imagination, filling the mould of your yearning
Look
The Everything Song
The sparkles of fireworks waltzing with the stars
Laughter of strangers as they become friends for the night
Knowing that the night itself, albeit just one, is endless, and therefore enough
Sounds of locking hands as they find one another in the crowd
And the whispers of wind brushing past the ones that remain solitary as the new hour turns
The melody of promises to be broken and wishes to come true at the least expected moments
Even the loneliness, whom you have fought for so long
Tonight he lingers by your side like an old acquaintance
And you listen together
As everything sings
Everything sings
Everything sings and your only hope for this year
Is for the song to never end
Things
All you can do, really, is
Love things foolishly and foolishly much
And do foolish things because they look real cool in the old films
And sing, like a lone, lovely fool, to keep warm
As you walk further into the cold dawn
Away from the things no longer meant for you
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