As Summer slipped by

As Summer slipped by
I sat in my room and
thought.
My arm was heavy in
my lap, my right
wrist broken.
The heat didn’t help.
“Do they even still make casts like that anymore?”
my Mom would ask.
I didn’t know what to reply,
having had no experience with
broken bones before,
only one severely ravaged heart.

As Summer slipped by
all I wanted to do was write.
Slate out the feelings and
the lingering hurt.
Ironic, then, that I could not
beyond a one finger jab
of a type that eased nothing,
only reminded;
at night I would lie
awake with the ceiling
rolling out poems that
would fall into fluff by
morning.

It felt like I was responsible for this Summer gone by
and nothing earned, no joy for winter
stockpiled
no rabid dips into the sea.

Then arrived a long-awaited
Monday in Nîmes to finally pick up
the plastic card that lets
me be an expat, an outsider
Provençale.
Hungry and celebratory,
I gathered up all of the textures with
my one good arm. Yet it
exhausted me. The exhilaration
no match for quotidian physicality.

So back to my room I went,
trailing bits of Summer like
crumbs from last years picnic.
The taste of what never
realised a too bland almost,
memories to be had.

Those who said that they would
stop by or take me shopping,
didn’t.
Which meant it was an expedition
to be invited to a lunch, delicious
save that, wine in,
forceful words
were launched (albeit with good
intentions) by someone
who
had once meant the entire world to me.

Shocked and angry, I pulled back yet again.

As Summer slipped by, it often
felt like another COVID lockdown
with far too much room to question
things like,
“Is he right?”
I would ask such
things out loud.
The ceiling was usually silent.

But the Time did pass, did
what it needed to
and so last Friday, with the work
of a whirring saw, my cast
was broken open.
The skin underneath it was slightly yellow,
the hairs on my forearm like
prairie grass.
All,
all things unattended to,
a physical translation of his voiced
disappointments.

Despite my nervous over-chatting
in that surgical
office, bright as the sun,
I couldn’t help but delight
in a tentative wrist wiggle, to remember
the much that such freedom brings.

Yesterday, I made one last stab at Summer.

Officially, it had gone
but nonetheless I tried.
Sitting on the oldest stone
steps of a familiar church –
ones worn down in the middle
from those seeking faith –
I held a cup
of sorbet. Three flavours.
Savouring, I watched the last of the tourists
gaggle at that which they knew nothing about;
yet how they had the right to be just there,
just like that.
It is what we all do, really, I understand.
My thoughts bustled up amongst
the leaves of the trees and those claims
of his that had hurt
were clamped
down by the coldness on my tongue.

“I still have beauty, despite weight gained
inside and outwards.
I also have much to give that has been buried
in everyday struggle. If I am not arriving as
I once did, I am trying.”

And then, all of those ideas became quiet
like a benediction.
With a whispering joy
this season of perpetual promise arrived.
Summer was finally in me.

I hope that you are all well. Finding the diamonds amidst the rough.

As always, I am sending much Love from Provence,

Heather

Ps. I hope that you will forgive me for not responding to all of your lovely comments on my previous post. They made me so happy and touched me enormously. Hopefully with physical therapy started, it will eventually get easier to type!