Saw My Soul on the Side of the Road
My connection to spirituality has been very rough as a young person. I feel the constant business of life chip away at any wonder, curiosity and interest in a concept like the soul. Connecting to spiritual ideas feels close to impossible in the scheduled days. The desire to progress in a world that doesn’t value something like the soul, ends up meaning less priority to trying to understand spirituality.
I understand the soul as clothing and shadows, exploring the extension of another self in the clothes we wear, and the juxtaposition of eternal life in the transience of a shadow. These are images that are more local than a faraway spiritual object that can feel impossible to imagine. The lighter versions of the soul in clothes and shadow is contrasted to an idea of my soul on the side of the road, left on concrete paths that are supposed to give direction. But an abandoned soul seems to struggle on even the solid paths.
Saw my soul on the side of the road, and I nodded hello-
she was a stranger’s problem now
I didn’t believe lost property should be found.
I walked away, didn’t understand how to look back;
what would I do anyway?
Look into my own eyes?
See the over and over again brown;
dark roast that needs milk and sugar to even taste.
Saw my soul on the side of the road, and I nodded hello-
Didn’t stop to say more than hello. Mannerless bitch.
That makes me the ripped loose thread
Gone from the weaved wonder world we say we wear,
but if you live in what you wear, doesn’t it wear you-
limbed tattoo?
I am slapped on the inside.
So slapped that the inside is out.
Tag is showing, my ‘Made in' scars visible,
everyone knows the setting to wash me on,
the percentage of my polyester.
It’s obvious that I only live when the minutes start,
when the buffering video plays,
a cheap copy of a Film Score takes another lap around my day.
I stop to sort my hair in a shadow,
wondering about what I am,
That dark outline on the wall,
weightless but anchored, sightless yet seen-
And there she is again,
My soul on the side of the road,
the one I thought I left for dead,
but maybe it’s her who lived life.
I am the banana peel that slipped on itself,
the red shell that ricocheted,
the rainbow road that wrinkled into a 3 centimetre footpath.
I thought the load would be lighter without the colours.
Wash only whites
and watch the world happen faster on the shirt of school kid,
paints and grass over white collars and buttons that I wouldn’t allow.
Because I didn’t understand her I took her out,
Because I didn’t know which names to say, which way to pray-
I took my soul out like it was pus in a pimple
Rubbed the liquid between my fingers, shivered at the feeling,
wiped it away on the hem of my skirt- thought no one was watching.
Saw my soul- the same stain as soil I sat in,
so I washed it away.
In these “save my family” days where I have much to ask for
I feel kicks and stabs inside, movement in my womb, but it is a phantom pregnancy- me trying to have me again.
Bring back my soul, lay it on its back to be the bridge
All to ask, “let them live longer”, because I saw the stars of faraway
in their smiles, in their long thinking gaze.
But I saw my soul on the side of the road,
about to cross after I had nodded it hello
And by the time I looked back
I saw it slung sideways
off of a road sign:
‘Go Slow’