Bogumił Pacak-Gamalski-Graham
When you write for the public you are barring your soul. You are – in some way – an exhibitionist. It doesn’t matter if you are an excellent or mediocre writer. You are barring your soul in front of an audience. In fiction or in documentary, autobiography, poem or novel. Otherwise, you are just a trickster with a talent to put words together – but a trickster nonetheless.
It was a bad day. I know – just the other one, when I saw the flowers in the alleyways of our park in Dartmouth – I was singing the praises, thanking you for coaching me in ways of new life. A better life, a happier one. Go and allow yourself to enjoy it – you said. You said, that you will be at peace knowing that I do. And I tried. And I failed. I failed you as you failed me. Yes, you did. Those last days you did. When we still had a chance to end it together. No, there was no physical chance, no miracle hiding somewhere holding the ray of hope that the outcome will be different or pushed way back into the future. There was no chance. No ray of hope on any horizon. But it meant there was no chance for me. Ever. We should not have gone to the sunny and sheltered lake beach, with shallow warm waters and no angry waves attacking the shoreline.
No. We should have gone to the angry sea, cold waters, powerful waves, strong currents, and whirlpools. I would have helped you carrying you on my back and we would have taken the last glorious swim together. Our swim, ‘us’ being one. There is no ‘me’ anymore, where the is no ‘you’. There cannot be ever. Anywhere. I am left to wonder in constant pain, anger, in constant thirst surrendered by oceans of salt. The sea is calling me a thief, a beggar of scraps, a coward. I have no Eurydice waiting for me somewhere in non-existent Hell. I am the Hell. I am the unanswered cry of pain. I am the gatekeeper and I am the key to Hell. Orpheus can’t pay Charon a few obols to ferry him across the River of Hades. I have fired Charon and sunk the boat. No in or out.
I went to the other beach, the ocean beach, the one we visited last time ever in 2022, and one we visited together for the very first time in 2019. Where we swam together, we laughed together. Where we were kissing.
It was an overcast day today. The sea was grey like steel. It was cold like steel. And I didn’t go for that swim. But let me, please! Give me that nod, tell me you agree, and won’t pull me back. I’m losing my battle.
Just don’t cry. Don’t be sad. Let me have a bad day. Let me wallow in pain and shame that I am and You are not. I was sorry for so long. Let me hear from you this once that you are too – sorry. And I will give you your peace again. Just don’t expect the impossible from me. Don’t expect me to have joy in life. To have pleasures of days and nights. One thing I can promise you in return – those years, these decades we had, made me impossibly happy. I was. And I remember it. All I ask in return is that sometime, on some days (as today) you will share my sorrow, my pain. And then you can have your peace again. But share in it the way we have shared everything else in our life. It is too heavy to carry it all the time alone.
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