PoetBay.com, the poetry webpage where you can publish your poems and short stories

Equals

She didn't leave me,
not at all!

She went to New Zealand (via Tibet)
and started an arborist business

She was one of those women
who climbed
high up into city trees
with a chainsaw...

On Day One
she had warned me
that she would be leaving,
and be gone a long time,
as far away as anyone could go

Before she left,
I visited her in Bristol

I flew home from Stansted
through the November rain;
landed at Skavsta in a downpour,
and my apartment had no walls;
my bed was an open grave,
and the air was made of hydrogen cyanide

The next day
I was comforted by my fellow police officers,
as I sat like a corpse
in the communications center
at work,
dispatching patrol cars
and talking with grieving people on the phone

One very wise police officer
gave me a mantra:
”I have a place to live,
I have a job to go to.”

At the health clinic
I met a counselor
with an extraordinary gift

She took me by the hand
and showed me the way back
to life,
and to myself

We had six sessions
as autumn turned into the winter of 2004,
and from having been
a stranger inside my own body,
I gradually began
to try walking
with my back straight
and my eyes level with the horizon

When, after a few months,
I no longer woke
at four o'clock every morning
drenched in cold sweat,
but slept until the alarm rang
at seven,
inside a rested body,
the relief was immense—
like an entire field
of dawn mist lifting,
and my body became
a fairy tale of glass,
filled with fresh air
and birdsong

And Zoë and I
had signed back on
as two independent lives,
holding up well,
doing well,
able to smile

I remember what she said,
just before she flew away,
while I was sinking
like a stone
into bottomlessness:

”It's only in your head!”

Three years later,
when she had returned to England
and was living in Crewkerne, Somerset,
I visited her
between two hikes
in the Swedish mountains,
and we were equals,
emotionally,
and as healthy everyday human beings;
two independent people
who were always glad
to see one another

Seventeen years later
she came to visit Anna and me
up here in Norrbotten,
and we remembered
how we had first met
at Abiskojaure Hut
during a hike
in August 2004,
and how she had misunderstood me
and thought I was asking
whether we should hike together
down to Nikkaluokta,
and had said yes;
the girl
with the wild storm of red hair
flying around her face,
cross-legged
in the bunk above mine,
a book lying open
furthest inside the dormitory

Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin