To my left, I see low hanging clouds, pinched by an orange sky like the hills are on fire.
To my right, a dynamic bay, passively blue, with dockland bells ringing like church chimes as seagulls roam dully above.
Behind me the floor is sprinkled with glass like un-cut diamonds in sand and with doors shut so harshly that the wood shocked and splintered into frame.
I focus on the colony of seagulls swooping that bay, their soft faraway grace reminding me of a dule of doves I once witnessed swimming the air over a jagged graveyard – flurrying, folding and flickering like a slender woman’s fingers melodising a harp.
But the harp stings and the seagulls are shot to the ground.
I lower my gaze to the tarmac road decorated with fallen Autumn leaves gracing it like summertime freckles.
The steel barrier of the balcony suddenly vibrates into boneless fluidity. Stunned, I witness motionlessly it pulsate impossibly, bending wetly into itself, then stretching out to restrictive normality. I blankly watch this happen in front of me, absent of any explanation. I begin to feel a natural unease as I observe the strangeness, a threatening feeling, a caution of danger, an activation of reaction. My heart rate becomes seemingly emphatic, inescapably stressing attention to the anxiety poking through any previous sense of calm – fucking acupuncture to a balloon.
As the build up continues its ascension – my realisation that the barrier is without doubt, de-stricting itself, I reflexively shut my eyes and the darkness then trumps all. After a few moments of lull, I hesitantly stretch my arm to touch and pleasurably find I have gripped something immobile, perfectly horizontal. I relieve my sight which triggers a feeling of detoxification in me as my body ceases its native panic. With my arm still closed around the cold barrier I lift my view to the greatest phasm of wonder, weightless square of frigid pressure above, the sky – beautifully undeniable and powerfully inexhaustible. But blink by blink, I notice a slow discolouring right in its bare middle. A steam of breath escapes me as I deliberate against my sight with confusion – I blink faster – and there – a deepening chasm – a bruised purple fathoms, like internal damage or leakage – I rub my eyes in disbelief but through the resulting fuzz now behold a sincere gash slashing straight through the sky, its thick carmine stem dressed with buzz cut dashes branching off its mother carve like nerves to a spine.
I shuckle away in horror, cloaking my eyes from natures dislaw. In a desperate seek for comfort I cover my ears and gently hum to myself old lullabies, furiously willing myself to conceptualise love – continuity, life. It is there that I create a peace to find – within the knowledge of resourcefulness, the essence that life like energy is indestructible.
Blindly and turned away, I reach for the bar again over my back. I flimsily catch it with gratitude and allow my full weight to depend on it. Then I pet my hand along it, ensuring again its unit until I am satisfied that my sight is mad and senses rebelling, the ordinary not lithesome, the sky not wounded.
But when I open my eyes the sky is gushing, raining blood drops from its open trauma having mercilessly expanded as though a giant scalpel had gradually etched from hand to elbow, the hills flaring as a ravaging fire lashes their surface and roars to me as it, with intentions of a monster, consumes its way to me – the water of the bay high and rising and now a glistering scarlet, a burning pink under a seeping rose sky, Ravens above dropping from their panicked flight in one by ones
Attending the mixing chaos, I hope I am mad. I hope my lover remains alive in a world far from here. I hope my brothers survive. I hope that with what is left of them, they find what has been lost
Leo Grey 