Maybe I’ll get you the sequins of sun on snow, and the frost roses I scraped off my car this morning, a note saying that nothing lasts forever, but look how pretty temporary can be.
I could get you a magic chocolate factory, with grass made of sugar and a flying glass lift, because nothing’s ever as it seems, and all problems look small when seen from above.
Maybe I’ll get you a home knitted jumper, twice the size of a Russian circus, to remind you to always dance, even when it’s Jan Garbarek and you’re not really feeling it.
No, I’ll give you a kiss. wrapped in an acorn, tread on string.
The miracle and the fairytale, in the frost roses, the sugared grass and the circus, hands on chests, messy bed sheets and quiet voices in the dark.
I’ll say that’s what you get, when you’re so much more than any present I could ever give.
Your eyes have seen the sun rise on 90 days, you have felt the dust of three months on soft skin. The woman holding you has gathered the days of war in her lungs, and where her memories are now smoke signals not even she knows how to decipher, her hands still tell her brain how to hold your little body so you won’t fall, how to shield you from the world she has fought and conquered and forgotten.
By the nursing home kitchen table she’s got no notion that dark coffee will scold her own mouth, but she moves the cup away from you, ”careful so he doesn’t burn himself.”
Suddenly, her language returns, her voice is the voice of the woman who has been hiding in the back of her heart since the turn of the decade.
She has held so many children safe in her arms, cured the scrapes of playground battles and lulled sobbing nightmares to sleep with lullabies she can’t recall ever knowing.
But holding you in hands that have held rationing cards – knitting needles – dried apple slices and one way tickets – the lady in the back of her heart breaks the surface of forgotten memories, takes a big gulp of air and looks at the world with her own eyes once more.
Coffee soaked into the roof of a mouth whilst rain rallies itself outside strawberry fudge melting between teeth fingertips on the back of a neck. The mist outside falls into the bottom of the mug coalescing white smoke condensate heart on a window is this what it is meant to feel like?
I swim through quiet waves of evening, enveloped by lazy currents. I am not afraid of the water.
As a swallow graces the surface, droplets falling from its wing, I think of all the lives lived by this fjord before me. Women wrapping their shawls tighter around themselves, waiting for sails on the horizon, for fathers, for brothers, for husbands to come home.
Young boys who went to sea, much like I went to university, clenched fists and starry night-eyes, who learnt that nothing can quell an unforgiving ocean, not even the children who challenged the shallow shores, those who never returned to their mothers’ lullabies.
Their stories are in every rock, in every seashell. in every tide that swallows the docks. Stories of islanders who read tomorrow in the skies, who knew that red clouds predicted weary storms the type that could orphan their children and starve their homes.
The water still cradles me, there is salt in my ears, my hair flows like jelly fish tendrils around my shoulders. I have no doubt that all the souls lost at sea, the stories and the children and the ocean are resting in these waters.
I am not a song writer, but I appreciate the ease with which well-written lyrics can fall off your tongue. During the second year of my creative writing degree, I got to experiment with a module that focused on song writing, and while not strictly my “thing”, I did really enjoy it.
This song was written in 2017, as part of that module, to the melody of First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes. It is supposed to illustrate all the small things that make up your perception of someone you love, all the small things you never thought of as special until you started associating them with your person. It is also about how even though a relationship may start off all exciting, like “fireworks and circus nights”, the safety and the comfort of the years may shape it into “October stars and Saturdays, and peppermint and quiet snow”, a quiet sort of every-day love.
Verse: This is a story about a boy, Who wished on cardamom and tea cups. He wondered the world without a map smelled like the city, danced like rain.
I got to hold him for one night, Strawberry breath and chilli chocolate. Thought I knew how to give him everything, Now I know I don’t know what that is.
Chorus: But I have learnt that I was wrong. You’re not the fireworks and circus shows I made you up as, no. You are October stars and Saturdays And peppermint And quiet snow oh oh.
Verse: If I could hold you one more time, I want to hear all of your stories. About rhubarb and sugar and blueberry jam And how it came to become you.
Talk about silver in your hair, And promises both held and broken. about choices and beauty and bitterness, and how we will grow old one day.
Chorus 2: I don’t want fireworks and circus nights, But blankets, slippers, plastic glasses, pillow forts and snowball fights. You are October stars and Saturdays and knowing it will be alright.
Oh oh oh.
A fun little experiment, where I tried my hands at something I very rarely do. I hope you’re having a wonderful day! -Andrea
