That Sweet Spot

That Sweet Spot
(published in Ambit 230)

I was too young for a long time before I was too old.
I stood around the pool edge watching the sad faces of each body that jumped into the water.

The bananas are grey but we cannot throw them away until the situation becomes impossible. We cannot admit that they are grey – keep hoping the other will say it.

We start each day by ignoring the bananas. We ignore the bananas before we make ourselves breakfast, even before we use the toilet.

I text you at work to tell you I am ignoring the bananas.
That they are still grey.

Something is bound to happen.

For a very long time I was so incredibly young that the whole world could see it, in the smoothness of my skin, the fat cheeks, the sincerity.

Youth is like the centre of a carousel.

If you are young for a very long time, you kind of get stuck there. For example, if you walk out at low tide, you may not be able to return.

One day I was old and it was a shame because I was still wearing the shorts my mother gave me when I was eight and they were bright pink and had these blue sharks on with white zzzzs all around them and smaller fish that were green and some other white lines, presumably representing waves.

I felt sick because I was wearing these shorts and I realised a lot of things hadn’t happened. I looked around and wondered what the total was.

A new landscape has appeared in my dreams recently. It is somewhere between Asia and the Americas; you reach it by walking through this certain temple in Mongolia and coming out the other side. The ground is moorland – it billows, feet get lost, reappear. Sparsely dotted pebble-dash houses close their curtains, shift location, turn. I keep going back there.

Hinterland: the part of the map that is furthest away from any border. No rivers, no roads, no landmarks. Slopes of mountains like running your hands along the unceasing flanks of elephants.

It is never the right time.