in parentheses

Jonathan Langley is a South African writer living in Oxfordshire. He has written extensively for religious and political magazines and websites, runs a podcast on these themes and has one published novel. He likes to write landscapes and portraits and has a love for Annie Dillard that borders on unhealthy.

---

Attachment disorder

My mother took all the pills
In another country
After remembering abuse buried
For 60 years
Under diets and eruptions, children and resentment,
An anger forcing foam through her teeth and ensuring
No friendship lasted longer than this month’s placement of the furniture,
This period of peace.

I got the call,
Dad crying and distracted, lost
When you had not replied to me in days,
Not seen me on your own in weeks
And I was so angry with you.
So in love.

I sent out texts, requested prayers for her
And wondered if she’d die before I stopped believing that she never liked me.
You said that you were sorry
And it was so good to hear from you.
I asked if you were free after work.

I am ashamed of a lot more than my feelings.

The fact that voices raised, even a little, in the morning wakes me up in panic
Makes me feel disloyal, still.
I barely ever think about her, collapsed naked by the side of the bed, my father about to wake up and find her.

But I think about you every hour, every day.

I could call her now.

I could talk to my therapist, a pastor, a new friend
But, the prayer chain knows, my exes know, my wife still knows,
My will is scattered on the quiet carpet, my throat is stuffed with memories
And forgetting doesn’t work if you are selfish.

I can’t remember what I said when he called, what I said when she was able to talk to me.
I remember every time you smiled at me. Every graze of your hand and each I love you.
Each extended, choking silence.

I cannot do this for 55 years.

Kingdom Brunel would have come to our wedding

We didn’t hang a padlock on a railway bridge,
But we clicked too soon.
We keyed initials in a station bench and
Tripped against the safety railings over someone else’s water.
Of course we fell. And in our laughter locked together
Over secret and repeated crossings, in our touching and our wearing.
We held hands, a gentle weaving, trussing
Fingers: yours in mine. Flexible as love-cast iron. Strong and durable as pine.
This shape can carry anything. This is courageous engineering.

We swapped bands without discussing.
Mine from a wedding, yours from before.
We never made love
Like they make love.
But we did our small undressing:
Slip the silver from my finger. Put it on.
Let me roll yours down your thumb
Like wet cotton. Let Me wear it.
You wear mine.
Past the windows races Time and we forget
To swap them back.
Romantic, funny, sad, distressing.

You’d fold my hand into a fist and squeeze until I couldn’t bear it.
Until my knuckles cracked like rivets failing. Clicking.
Metal ticking in the sun. Like sleepers counting distance
To a necessary derailing.
You marked me and unlocked me. There
Were signal failures screaming in our deaf caressing.

Our love was structurally unsound from the beginning.
A balancing of risk and joy.
Cantilevered lust and trust, suspending everything but grace. Perhaps
This is the Romance and the Majesty of Rail. Perhaps
A bridge on sandy ground is bound to fail,
And civility can’t engineer it.
This is how it all collapsed.

We no longer meet in stations, me and you.
The barriers doing what barriers do.
Our ticket punched, the full line run.
Our bench is gone. Removed, replaced, with something
Better looking. Strong. And good. And new.
The vandalism unpunished (I’m not sure if this is true).
Its only trace late reservations, now that everything is done.

Our rings removed at journey’s end.
Your new initials locked in place.
An orphan bridge.
Bolt-cutter friend.

---