Wayne H.W Wolfson

Royal Street Blues
Requiem for a vanished place

I had been a liar, she too. We all were then. For survival, out of boredom and perhaps worst of all, occasionally for sport.

She wanted to be tired and hungry for her painting. There was a sort of crazy truth in that though. The thing that initially attracted me to her, she crawled into bed with Everyman Library editions of all the great Russians, showing up at work a week later with supposed new insight into the human soul and demanding severance pay.

The rules of play? I too liked to think all my years of studying the human condition gave me master technique, getting what I want. No. Inherently, loneliness runs down the street. It had been easy, for both of us. What did I want?

Where is she now?

Right here, two dimensional, ink letter bones laid out on white lined paper skin, becoming a symbol, for whatever I want to make her.

No. It is not really her, and even to myself I cannot pretend otherwise. Maybe, she is there to be found in the past still. Fighting all the old battles, records put back sleeveless, empty coffee cans put back in the cupboard, an empty war which no longer matters.

Superstition made her fear words. She would only whisper what she wanted, on the outer edge of perception, audible only to her own inner ear.

She liked wigs, the bigger, the better. They were a reminder of incidents imagined but not experienced. She liked that I would eventually take part of her for my art. She offered it up, at least I now tell myself so.

That first night. Oh, how she wanted to kiss me. She didn’t put it like that though. I clean it up to make the words fit the rhythm of the piece.

Exile.

During my morning walks I recently came across two swans, wintering here. They are huge. For all their beauty there is also something vicious about them. I can understand Wagner’s obsession.

Exile. I am of three minds now. Memory, reason and imagination. All that I want and will say. Blunt words, this place has shown me the absurdity of doing it otherwise. To embrace, to hate, must be done simply, in a new found truth.

And where is she now?

Maybe she refused to change, but unable or unwilling, went out in an operatic blaze of destruction. There was something about the way she fucked that makes me think that is it.

She did not care about the other person, except as a witness and an object possessed of skin warmth, to use.

If she finished first, which often happened, when she was worked up, then it was done. Not being able to go until she said stop, a side effect of her occasional speed habit, and there would be moody silence accompanied by a look of contempt.

Not all the little details have teeth though. That tiny shack where I got the best catfish of my life, an old copy of Poe which smelled of rain and violets.

Exile.

Now, it’s the rainy season here too. I lay in bed. The hard fought battle won, to be able to do nothing all day.

The record player is on the wobbly table next to the bed. Close enough so that only one arm has to jut out from among the sheets to restart the music. The same arm whose hand has a thumb occasionally busy crushing ants. Their little bodies flattened and lost among the rolling waves of dirty white cotton.

Just for today, I am nostalgic for the old passions.

I want to dance in the fire with my memories of you, an imperfect ghost called upon to do its job.

There is a thousand things I want to say, whispered like the low hiss of a flame.