#734

Grief at Parting

I let the moment go.
I left your lap and your breasts, my sister's breasts,
to rest my weary head on dreams and colder memories
not strong enough to be weak or honest enough to want
and afraid to ask as I wasn't sure.

What am I supposed to do with all these feelings?


4 August 1991
 
 

I only vaguely remember the event that triggered this poem but not what it’s about. I know it takes its title from a painting by Giorgio de Chirico, ‘The Melancholy of Departure’ but I’m not sure why. And I’m not even sure if it’s the 1914 painting (‘Gare Montparnasse (The Melancholy of Departure)’) or the 1916 painting (‘The Melancholy of Departure’); I suspect the former and that’s the image I’ve used. The date puzzles me too. I remember being with my sister but not in 1991.

I was upset. I don’t know why I was upset—so many things to choose from—but we were on the couch in her flat only it couldn’t have been the couch because the couch was against the wall. Had she rearranged the room? So how exactly did this work? Was my head in her lap? I was crying (I think I was crying) and she went to comfort me. Was my head on her shoulder or in her lap? The shoulder makes more sense. After a time she either lifted or lowered my head so that it rested on her right breast. It wasn’t her simply shifting because she was uncomfortable; it was a deliberate action. I never understood why she did that—there’s nothing remotely maternal about my sister—but it’s a gesture that’s always touched me. We’ve never talked about it but I doubt she’d have any answers. It clearly felt right at the time. It wasn’t sexual and it was an awkward position (she didn’t have much of a bust to rest anything on) which is probably why I moved. Is that how my head ended in her lap? You would think I’d remember something like this with crystal clarity but far from it.

 

This is the first original poem in over a year. I wrote one more on 16 August and then nothing—no poetry at least—for three years. This was the start of my second major depression.