Stowaway

(This is something I wrote a while ago, still unfinished, but sharable at this point)

something shaking.

stirring inside - like a whole world stored that is aching to get out. storied. stow(ed)-away.

like the story forever on hold - the english page boy who ran away from a broken home, he is hiding behind the potato barrels in the dark galley on the spanish ship off the coast of turkey. a stow-away, but three days out he was found by the cook. and he had to work for his keep, the price of a secret, endlessly peeling potatos while keeping in the shadows. because if they found him - before he could escape down the docks and slip into the sprawling markets of constantinople, crowded with spices and noise and the allure of the gateway into that other world beyond where camels carried caravans and thieves with wide swords wore gold coins and purple cloth and travelled by moonlight... then he overhears them talking, and he doesn’t speak the language, but he just understands the gravity of his situation, with pounding heart and muscles tense as he crouches in the storage, in the hold, the next second never quite unfolding, a story forever untold because after that moment you could no longer.

you lost the ability to bring that world into our own. your own mind under arrest as the body surrendered to attack. that year we were not allowed to see you. but our parents did and we sat downstairs at the wood table on wooden chairs our feet not quite touching the wood floor, the large sliding glass doors letting in light and a view of a big garden full of green and stone footpaths. We could almost hear you - even though it didn’t sound at all like you. the voice that came muffled through the ceiling, through closed doors and down the stairs sounded like a deformed creature holding the memory of someone we knew. our parents returned, grave but strong, and then we left. that was one of the few times we ever visited the house where you grew up. where when you were young your family had a pig and named it nancy, our grandmother’s name, which was fine until it was killed and eaten and she took great offense. but deep down she was laughing because she and your mother were like sisters. they used to walk to the post office every morning together and i used to tag along - one mile and back! I was so proud, I was five. we never got the chance when I was six, my grandmother didn’t want to go alone, but we never forgot the talks and your mother’s smiles.

we were told you were sick and could no longer walk. you had a problem with your blood. that sometimes when you got a cut your blood wouldn’t stop bleeding, your body couldn’t make it stop, it would just keep going. so sometimes you lost too much and needed to go to the doctor to get some more. and sometimes blood can hold a disease and the doctor one time gave you some blood that had some disease in it. and this is why you were so sick. because this type of sick meant that when you got a another kind of sick, like a cold or an ear infection, your body didn’t know how to make itself better so you just stayed sick. like how your blood couldn’t make itself stop. only this kind of sick was more serious because you might not get better, because your body didn’t know how.

and then one day it all stopped. you would no longer be in that room in a wheel chair with a broken voice. you ceased. and the next summer we were all a little bit older, the tall bed with the horse hair mattress and the mustard coloured blanket was still there, the one that was hard to climb up onto, but we all used to fit, even though no one liked it that much because it made small crunching noises under your bones because of the horse hairs. our parents hated sleeping on it, but we loved being so close to the ceiling. like being on the ship with close quarters, all of us huddled as if it were crowded with kegs and barrels and crates and whispers in languages we weren’t suppose to understand, but magically we knew the meaning anyway. they meant imminent danger, they meant hold your breath, they meant heart beating in your throat and your skin nervous for fear of flinching and being caught. with you we could play hide and seek without ever leaving the bed. somehow you knew how to play our heartsrings to the edge of adrenaline and our eyelids couldn’t open wide enough to see the reality you fed us.

and sometimes we used to think, if we could just open our eyes wide enough, we could see what happens next. and now, sometimes i think if i could just remember enough i could remember what happened before. but the hold is all i can remember. how you kept us so tightly wedged amongst the potatos, somehow safe as you let us peer into the perils of adventure.

“you can rob me of my sight and you can poison my blood stream, but as long as i can dream, than life is worth living” -- Brett Dennon (song lyric)