Here is your thread

'But I don't believe God is only found in specific places... I think He can be anywhere... above you, around you. He can be in your living room at home; in the ceiling, in the table, in the doorknob...'

There was a collective, polite hush, interspersed by dry coughs and taps. The large rectangle of chairs cut a sharp outline round the room, and dull wooden colours leaked over the remainder. Wooden floors, a rising wooden roof split with an underlevel of chipped planks before a dark, empty spread prefacing the point of the ceiling, as if a bottled space had been created to collect thoughts before they tried to escape.

The heavy-set, sweating man next to the speaker turned, his head a thick block with a crew-cut fused on.

'I've heard of God being in many places, but I've never heard of Him in a fucking doorknob.'

There was a few stifled, amused grunts. The speaker, a younger man with a pasty wash of blonde hair, twisted in his seat and folded his legs, forehead wrinkling.

'I didn't say He was just in a doorknob, I meant He could manifest in different - '

The head-block swung back.

'God's a doorknob! Christ, I've heard some things here, but -'

'I didn't say that!'

A frizzy-haired woman at the head table motioned her head solemnly. Always solemnly, always laced with the affected depth of ritual.

'Please, Ronny.'

Slabs of arm folded into each other. 'Alright, I'm sorry. Jist havin' a laugh.'

The women repeated her slow nod and the mousey man beside her, fresh and spark-eyed in the aftermath of his introductory share, clenched his hands upon the table and mimicked her nod.

'Neil, please continue,' she offered.

'I intend to,' piped the blonde wash.

I clasped my own hands and bore my eyes into my worn-out trainers. Why did I come here? What was this about doorknobs? 

The thin thread of individual voices passed from the blonde-wash to the block-head, and there were conciliatory back-pats and knowing laughter. The thread looped through a twitching, greasy-faced teen who dissolved into a mass of swear-words, bemoaning the city; this shitty fucking city, this fucking shithole I have to get out of, as if it were the ground beneath his feet plying a relentless but localised urge throughout his nervous system. 

It slipped briefly over a dotted series of 'happy to be here and happy to be sober' - fiddling people, pawing at trouser hems and mentally urging it along - and skipped past the even briefer 'pass'. As the fan of light cut from the windows dwindled into dark panels, the slick thread passed into a jittery woman, short-haired and curled into her bright blue jumper. She was very quiet.

'I don't know what I'm doing,' she said. Her body was clenched, and she tugged at wisps of jumper, but her voice was calm and distant. 'I don't know what I'm doing.'

And there was the wash, and the grit base from which everything began. I knew the faces, I knew them well, and I knew which faces were ready for the floor - the opportunity to press their thoughts into some kind of willing sponge. I cringed internally when I saw certain bright faces planted into the head table, prepared to spill wisdom in nicked soundbites - 'You're not waiting for a bus! You're not standing at a bus stop, waiting for a bus to come along!'

I thought I might reach out towards the next person who said 'how do you eat an elephant'; reach out and press my thumbs into their eyes... one bit at a time. 

I don't know what I'm doing. 

She was tugging quicker at the arm of her jumper.

'I got in yesterday... I sat at the kitchen table, and I poured... I poured myself a glass of wine. And I drank it. I drank it. And that was it. I didn't have another. I didn't want another. That was it. And I don't know what - I wasn't prepared for this. I've been - I've been sober sixteen years, and I always thought - that was it, but... I wanted a glass of wine, and I had a glass; just one, and then I didn't want another. And that was two days ago, and I haven't wanted a drink since, but it feels like everything's...'

There was the awful still, the sweeping rustle, and she ducked her head. The great fill of black shifting behind the sprawling planks above sucked and claimed the drifting words in the absence of anything else.

'I wasn't prepared for this, and I don't know what to do. I wasn't prepared... it feels like everything's changed, I don't know what I'm...'

The quiet words tailed off and the thread hung, a sick unseen twist of blue. 

I can't see it, 

I can't touch the twists. 

But it moves with me at all times.

It slicked round her fiddling hand and then it left her, glassy-eyed and lost in the corner of her mind amongst a rectangular, wooden field of people.

*

Clouds amongst ten years strapped on the back. Or not clouds, threads. One thread.

The smoking men footnoting the meeting were shadow-wraiths at the base of the hill as I ran. I was late for my train.

I made it in the nick of time and slipped through the doors as they slid open, temporal-relief hiss fuzzing through the air around and beneath me. Further down on either side swarms of bent sticks massed and bled into the platform, and in the grainy dusk they flapped and swithered towards the gates, fusing into jittery queues. But my compartment was sparsely populated, and the purple-white boxed environment unfurled fresh and blighted only by several sunken, head-phoned frames peering into phones.

I chose a seat by the window; a box of four, a purple sub-unit, a crisp white planted table, and pushed my feet out and pushed the back of my head into the soft cushion and followed the sift of grey and the spots of light blushing past the wired queues and I knew that everything was beginning again because everything must always begin again.

There are always beginnings; always unfurling in sharp blue crests.

The trolley rattled across my boxed white-square kingdom and a bright face offered me a drink. My eyes dipped to the miniature wine bottles and the beer.

With a judder and a rhythmic series of thuds straightening to a pulse, the train was off and my window sprang a slideshow of grey concrete, shadow-people slipping to rushing green spreads penned over with black. My fingertips pushed at the white plastic of the table and they were irritable, and I wanted to be doing something - I wanted to be doing something because there was always something to be done, there was always something missing and as the slipped fields disappeared I knew this was because the past was too quick to rear its head at such times. And it wanted to be seen, it wanted to dominate, and this was when I saw the fizz of blue twisting again out of the corner of my eye.

It lurked on the underside of the window outside, a little sparkling trail pulsing alongside the train.

*

Here is a thread

You can't see it, you can't touch the twists -

But it frays, shifts, spins and unfurls 

Follows you

Always -
And this is the underlevel, the silent undercurrent

A blue electric spread; your woven links cast and recast
So here is the thread and its 

Frayed edges; ruffled and detached; breaking and twisting

And at times resembling

Snapping, shredded rope; a distant thing, a washed spread, a wretched lack of care for people and years

*

I twiddled the keys in my flat door and eased inside. It was dark and cold and the air carried that same thick silence, as if it had followed me from the meeting room and might at any point be punctured by a throaty cough or a Big Book reading.

I pushed on a small lamp in the kitchen - I wanted the dark, I didn't want it chased away. I settled into a chair at the table, rummaged around my bag, and fished out the miniature wine bottle I bought on the train. I screwed off the top and looked at it; absorbed the swell and curves.

- I don't know what I'm doing. I wasn't prepared for this. -

Behind the film of my eyelids I didn't want to think of this, and I did want to think of this. I wanted to know what goes on in other people's heads, and I didn't. There are some people for whom I would give anything to know their thoughts. Amidst swirling patterns and dotted colour flourishes I built people up and I broke them down. I wanted to be brave, but I was not. I was not entering into conversation to gain something, I was entering into it to -

Grow. I stepped over to the cabinets and fished out a small glass. I had no wine glasses now. I gurgled the wine into the tumbler and sat back down. Swollen parcels of light broke above the lamp and I stared at the glass, trying to will the thread back into sight. 

*

But look closer-

This is the high water mark breaking back and releasing

The thread binds; dull now in deep blue hues

Sparks, swings again and loops round, climbs;

Winds and snakes to follow you once more and now these years are

Vital years despite the parting - for the sense of self they deliver, and the base; the hollow swell from which everything begins again

And there are always beginnings; always unfurling in sharp blue crests,

Furrows throughout and the grinding base - the supposed lost years, the drained time given over to hurt - is the grit beginning, the starting point

From which the heart - and the will, and the spark - lifts and thrives;

Wiser and never more whole 
So here is your thread

You can't see it, you can't touch it -

Weaving - in places severed - but whip-strong and renewed

*

I craned my neck to the side and examined the sweating glass, the yellow fluid. I didn't know what I was doing either. I was never prepared for anything. So what would it be like, to go back to the start in that way? Even if just for the space of a single glass.

It didn't look like anything. In some ways it wouldn't matter if it was a glass of wine, or a book, or a fucking doorknob. Why would I know what I'm doing? I would always just be scraping the surface anyway. So do you project willpower? Is that as good as the real thing? But it was not chipping off seconds and minutes and hours forever; it was what came afterwards. I felt the same twist of worry and peace, a fractured dynamic that would never leave me now. Perhaps it had always been there, and I had just been brought to be acutely aware of it; as if the worst things went hand in hand with the very best, and I couldn't ever experience any set level ever again.

There was so much to be grateful for in this; so much that the heart couldn't contain it.

*

One last time; strain your eyes, look closer, past the immediate - 
In wired folds between the soft blue trails

There are the breaks, the knots, the cut ties -

Leave the cut ties, fuck the cut ties, look closer - 

The strings of blue cling close around your links and you

And loop, intertwine, high from the coiled base, always -

*

By the pale of the window I poured the glass, untouched, into the sink, and watched the slip of wine suspend for a millisecond like snapped, shredded rope; a distant thing, a washed spread, a wretched lack of care for people and years.

It trickled like buttery oil down the drain and I felt a million miles away from it and I didn't know what I was doing either. But there wasn't room for the past anymore, and if there was, it was in fluttered bursts; as if it was a dream, or as if it happened to someone else. And I think there was this thread - I couldn't see it, but -

There are always beginnings.

*

So here: here is your beautiful thread

You can't see it, you can't touch the twists -

But it moves with you at all times; it loves, shapes, grows, hopes, believes and spreads

*

In the dark I sat in the kitchen for hours and toyed with the empty bottle. It might have been the spill of lamplight melding with the window but it felt like everything was tinged with a slight blue, and it felt like the cusp of some final, electric change. The greatest of times and the worst of times bent and wove and broke amongst the swallowing blue-black and thin trails of moonlight. It may have been an afterlife - if it was the same life, it cut colours beyond all comprehension.

*