Facts And Factions

ADULT EDUCATION

It’s all right being in this public space because I have my group around me. The thing we all know is you keep tight together and you face out into the emptiness. That way everyone’s back to back, you have a core however many come at you. It lights up all of us, binds us together, even though…
…we're unnatural bed-fellows, some of this lot are at art school. All la di dahs and scratchily bright like fireworks. Darling, darling, darling they say and it clenches my teeth but it also runs a rough finger along my spine, makes me stand slightly more erect, more certain even as my mind screams that I don’t belong with them. Fact is I do belong because of that thing more important than all the other things that should have kept us whole cities apart, let alone just streets, let alone inhaling each others’ breath, let alone…
…kissing and that is all I think about back to back when I can’t see your face, your mouth like a bridge, your eyes searching me out but I can see my least favourite brother staring at me, his face all crunched up. He isn’t sure whether to say he knows me or move right on then he’s gone. My bottom clenches because, well because, it was becoming like everyone would know what I was doing and I sort of want that…
…and I sort of don’t. Like standing on our bridge over heaving waters and thinking that I wanted to jump, to fly but I simply didn’t want to land and for it be over. Yet it probably already is over because my brother’s seen me and he’ll run like the dog’s pee he is, back to my dad, and then there’ll be hell to pay. There’ll be shaking like it could change my contents, shouting like he can impregnate my head, punching to make his points burst right through my guts. He’s afraid because he knows what might happen to me so he illustrates it with his fists. My tender bladdered guts…
…gasp as your little finger links over mine and in this moment I am inviolable. INVIOLABLE. You taught me that word. You taught me it was what I should be and anyone who said they loved me should see me as that too. Anyone who loved me should want me to learn, to grow up and out of this place quick as a weed. My dad says he’ll learn me and it’s something else entirely. My flesh shudders at the thought of it…
…but it’s all I know and I've known it for so long. You, with your group, your faction based on facts, on education are something else. Even as I stand here, back straightened, smiling although you can’t see, I believe I will be pulled away from you, taken back into that churning earth. I hear them coming with their switches, their chants, their age-old claims…
…wielding dark guns like sharks that snatch amongst us swimmers, downing those that try to keep to wallow away from them. I turn and catch your eye, but my mind sees you wallowing too in the metalled mud, reddened. Turns you into someone I dreamt about rather than a reality. I let go of your finger, step away from what I wanted to be. As they come for me I close my eyes and live in my memory of your pair of boots at the bottom of your bed, socks dropped in, ready for tomorrow.