I have muted the TV’s voice, the crass cacophony of the radio channels. I have tuned in to a mirthful song where jazzy beings play at being in love, wooing, laughing, hugging the trees, gyrating, pirouetting in joyful bliss. I watch and watch and imagine they are you and me, us in our days of youthful glee. Youth shouldn’t have left us though, I am only 27 and you 28 or so, but outside our bedroom window the sky has gone grey, the grass in the garden dry and yellow, sorrow has been sitting on it for so long. And when at night, you are sleeping by the baby’s side, by the cold moonlight, I hear you sigh, and I count the wrinkles that cling to your face and the frozen tears that don’t come out. And I climb out of bed and press my nose against the frosted window-pane and in the garden I see Him, sitting silently, morose and grim. He looks me in the face but I am not scared, I don’t think I’m strong, I’ve just known him for much too long! You have come back from wherever you had gone. You ask me “ Have you seen the news honey? Read the papers? Heard anything in passing?” I point to the ashes that remain of newspapers; I burnt them...they reek of blood so! Then you say, “A killed B and C gunned A down. In Austria there have been homicides in a town…They were in their twenties who wielded those guns…” and I say “Stop! Don’t fill my ears with the sound of bullets! Stop! Don’t fill my tired eyes with slaughtered people’s blood! Stop! I lost my childhood sleep dreaming of lost souls! Stop! Don’t stain me red, I have my baby to tend. Stop! Hush! Drop the topic now! Love me, kiss me, hold me close!” You do so. You know I am right for you lost your childhood sleep too, once upon a time. For you are scared just as I am, when the baby cries what is it for? It’s not hunger, it’s not pain, it’s a terror that congests his chest, and returns again and again and again! I’m scared if he dreams of guns, I’m scared if he smells blood, like you and I do. I have seen you burying your nose in artificial flowers. So you go on, like you are told, loving me, kissing me, holding me close. But the sky is grey and the trees are bare, the waters calmly flow, and outside our window the world ages so, and in the garden I see Him. And when I love you and you love me and we both love and try to find a refuge and some warmth, I can see Him seeing us two and I can tell that you’ve seen him too! But you tell me to close my eyes and think of baby, you and love and you help and I try and I try to not give up and we try to stay alive.

Darkness falls like a curtain.

And between the two of us

Words lose their way

In hidden mazes

Of the treacherous air.

I have communed with

The dead and the past.

But dead now

And banished to silenced words

How do I touch your hand?

Words are the most unruly of all things

They don’t fall in place.

And nothing, not love, not hope

Can ever transcend death.