ELLIE L. H. MACKAY - Blog

ELLIE L. H. MACKAY

Too Familiar

16/9/2022

It has been so long
Since I've felt this tired
As I've been working
Tirelessly
On resting.

On stopping before the telltale symptoms worsen
and my brain cracks
And out spills all the fear and all the ramblings and misery and anguish
of a decade of holding my smile
Holding my tongue
Holding it all
                       in.

I've been working tirelessly
On letting go of guilt
Messenger's Guilt, Conduit's Guilt, Warrior's Guilt
And all the tiny constant reminders that I
should
be doing more
Letting go of the
Hourly nuggets
and daily daggers
Of a life not.fully.lived.

I've been working tirelessly
On giving myself permission
      to breathe
To relax, to restring,
For wounds to become scars

Pace
Pace
Pace

Slow
stop
   repeat.

I have been working tirelessly
And I am good at it
I have done well
Everyone is proud
I have earned the endless hours in which I have trained my body to curl obediently among warm blankets and cool pillows
I have learned to feel comfortable in comfort

So I wonder why today
When I have lapsed
And the clock has gained extra hours once more
And the warning signs slide back into my periphery
When I find myself adrift in the twilight hours
The hours I no longer know
And long shadows curl around me like dark mangrove seagrass
And my eyes sit heavy with all the day's lead

I wonder why
It feels like being home.

Tendrils

16/9/2022

In each day there are moments
Of quiet
When dust glints on the windowpane
And pipes creak their soft reminders
That I am home
That I am here
A subtle call that this moment not go
Unobserved

In each day there are heartbeats
Of fresh breath
Hanging in warm air, drifting
And distant motors hummm
With footfall mixed
Some soft, some marching
The space between trees filled
With the echo of voices past

In each day there are hiccups
Of tired muscles
Shifting and settling
White Steam whistling
Against melamine tile
Gentle droplets on polished wooden floor
Clouds billowing in tannin surf

And I -
I spend these slow minutes
Carefully, silently
Trying to untwine
What little is left
Of the remaining Tendrils of me

I would have loved you

16/9/2022

I would have loved you.
Even if you had
my frizzy hair
your father's nose
my cellulite and
his knobbly knees
my stubbornness
his temper
my anxiety
his depression
your grandmother's hearing loss
your papa's male pattern baldness

I would have loved you
Even if you were the worst parts of all of us
Stitched into a patchwork of faults and flaws
A tarnished canvas that this harsh world
would have tried its damned hardest to reject
But I
With all my heart
With all my mind
From deep inside my empty belly
I would have loved you,
Endlessly.

when the Mighty Oak wains

5/3/2020

Sometimes it's hard to imagine the sheer scale of the You that I once knew,
Before your world became so small and mine grew to be so big.

I remember it well, the vast expanse of your love.
The timeless, bottomless stories you wove around my head,
borne of threads collected from a thousand places and a thousand different hearts,
and sewn into mine like a beautiful, colourful reminder of my very own Origin Story.

But it was you, in all your vastness, who taught me to build cities
And continents
And oceans
And to fill lakes with my experiences
Let rivers flow with all my most joyous memories
To stack mountains up and cap them with starlit snowflakes of friendship and love and laughter
To add gold and silver threads
to my very own tapestry.

But then a sickness wrapped in aged bones
Came rolling in
Like a thick damp fog over a turquoise ocean
And put up his walls around you
And built his ramparts high into the skies
Closed the city gates against the plague of happiness and freedom
Drawing heavy, motheaten curtains across your horizons
So you could not see
The world you had created
And shown to me

And now I see the fairytales
Were wrong all along
Old Father Time is not a kindly wizened wizard
But a grotesque narcissist of a man
Rotund belly swollen with all the time he has stolen
The opportunities theived from your bowl
Leaving you to starve slowly in his shadow.

I was enveloped by your geography.
Before him and now and your new world order,
where all you talk about is Moira and the plums
and what time the antique market opens on Sunday.

Oh how we would mock monotony, with its routine
You used to loathe routine.
Now you are crippled by it,
incapable of seeing the world in any way other than self-inflicted monotony.

Oh mother, how I long for your infinity to return to you.

Spin

5/3/2020

it would be really helpful
if the world could just stop turning, for a moment
If I could step
off
for
just
a
heartbeat
To catch
my breath
Re-tie
my laces
tight enough
to keep me
running
another
30
years
and straighten my back
tall enough
to
hold
my
head
high
again.

That would be really helpful.

Torch

5/3/2020

I think because my light seems endless
People don't realise
That I only have so much of myself
To give
And when that light is running dim
It takes my
whole
soul's
energy
To recharge
refill
reignite
So I can burn a moment longer
Shine a sparkle brighter
Illuminate the way
a little distance further
To always give them
just one more joule.

And because there is always another person
who will need me next, tomorrow or thereafter
I will never let my torch fall dark.
So sometimes
in order to love everyone,
To keep my reserves bright enough
for everyone else,
I burn myself
Into the shadows.

I know it's not fair

18/12/2018

How can I tell you
I'm scared to leap
When I was always the one to dive headfirst
without a second thought?

How can I say
I'm not ready to fall
And see your irises flicker with sadness
And not feel guilty
For hurting you with the pain I hold inside
From all the others who came before you?

How desperately I wish
I could find the breath to jump again
To feel the rush as I submerge
And emerge
Next to you
Together in the wide, deep ocean
Two souls afloat
Forever.

Maybe another day.

I wish I were the rain

12/5/2018

I wish I were the rain
So I could flow endlessly
A heavy, constant patter of refreshment
Never stalling in my endless journey
To cool, wide ocean

I wish I were the rain
So I wouldn't have to worry
About bills
And deadlines
And societal pressure to
be
just
right.

I wish I were the rain
So I could float around the globe
Taking my pick of jungles or cities
Upon which to unleash my torrent
And gather strength in numbers

I wish I were the rain
So I needn't bother with
Waiting for you to call me back
The rain never needs anyone
To splosh its way through life.

My family of strangers

12/5/2018

Where do I know you from?
Your face is so familiar
With its creased brow and dark, strong eyes

You are Greek, I think.

Your hair is different, wild and free
I seem to remember you normally wear it up.

But when was that? That you wore you hair up?
Where do I know you from?

I'm trying to look at you longer, to catch a memory within your face,
Without you seeing me staring at you,
Staring into you to find that memory.

I steal a glance, and then another
Each time brings another twinge of knowing
And the memory of you dances teasingly around the shaded outer edges of my mind.

Where do I know you from?

Are you the woman who works in the bakery opposite my housemates office? Did you sell me a pomegranate scone that one time? I try to remember you smiling but I can't, even though your eyes are kind.

Are you the cleaning lady the agency sent the day Annika was away? I seem to remember she was slimmer, her jawline more defined.

Are you my binman's wife? The girl who used my phone when she lost her bike? Are you the delivery woman who always hides
my parcels in a safe place? How do I both recognise
and not recognise your face?

You are a polar bear in the desert. a person out of context, and in spite of your familiarity you are an enigma to me.

Are you the cashier at my local Waitrose? The mother of a boy I used to teach? The woman in front of me in the post office line just this morning? Are you the receptionist at my dentist? Where do I know you from?

How many molecules of memory we must have to maintain, locked away within our brains, hanging on to all those tiny seeds of recognition of all the people in the periphery of our lives. The people who are so significantly insignificant, so familiarly unfamiliar. Ever present, influential, necessary, unnoticed. And funnily, they will never meet one another, my very own family of strangers.

Perhaps you are the ex-girlfriend of my boss' son, who got too drunk at last year's summer party? No, that's not it, that's not it, you are closer, sooner, more present in my life than she.

And then, our eyes meet again, and suddenly there you are, placed all at once in concrete. You were surrounded by white in the cool of the studio. You are the yogi whose class I tried, about three weeks ago, on a Tuesday night. I was stressed and your class overran. You look different in evening clothes.

Suddenly I realise that you were teaching the same class tonight. The class I was supposed to attend, but missed, because I wasn't sure you and I were quite the right fit. And now I'm here and you, you on your way home from the class I just missed, you are looking at me with your kind eyes, and now this is even more awkward.

The Big Day

12/5/2018

Finally, in a sleep deprived, anxiety-riddle haze, after all the song and dance and circus of it, after all the stress and clenched jaws and held breath and tension, I was alone at home. The events of the day suddenly dissipated, melting away like a fog clearing under a heavy grey sky. Slowly, I sat down on my bed, and I wept.

I wept for the loss of her. I wept for the celebration we were unable to give her. I wept for the bleak and impenetrable future, and the fact that we had been unable to reach her - a powerlessness worse than any I've known previously. And I wept for the sadness I now share with him, a bond neither of us wanted but with which we are now indefinitely saddled. As though we have both been unwillingly drafted into a war with no end in sight, we now face the world together but without the one rock who has bonded us for a lifetime. It is unsettling, and sharp, and distressing. But under it all, under all the anger and confusion and grief, it is a heavy, aching sadness. And so, until the sun rises and quiets my tears, I weep.