You can never go back.
Trite words and so true right?
No, very wrong.
You can go back, but you probably shouldn't.
I went back to look for the wild eyed girl who broke me 30 years ago when I was still a boy. She broke me and made Mick.
But Mick was only part finished when she disappeared so he had to finish the job himself and that was a problem because all Mick was good at was breaking things.
Mick would have a life filled with the sound of breaking glass and it is a very beautiful sound after all.
But enough of him, his story isn't yet.
I went back and found Philippa.
Stumbling texts into the night at first after finding a trace of her on some godawful 'social network' site. I didn't know her or what she was now. Decades had passed between us and lives had been lived. We'd both taken the steps down the roads of normality and security for many years doing the 9 to 5 and being 'adults'. Yeah, we were both great actors it turned out.
Eventually texts lead to calls, mails lead to a meeting and then I realised why I'd stayed away from her so long. She was still the wild eyed girl and I was still the boy made half from love and half from hate. "not like other kids"? I wore it as a badge of pride.
We met at the gardens in St.Annes in the early Summer, she hadn't aged at all. Still unconventional, still intense and still full of that fire I recognised instantly.
She just said 'hi' and I could barely stand.
We walked like a regular couple, hand in hand making smalltalk and I turned to her and asked "can we do this Philippa? 30 years and now start this?". She looked at me, smiled and replied "yes Michael, say yes". I know I grinned and I know we wandered on down to the shore to walk and talk for another 7 hours but I can only remember a few parts with true clarity.
I remember the feeling of her touch on my face and how it stunned me into silence.
I remember her asking "will we survive this Michael?" and knowing the answer could as easily be no as yes. I also knew she didn't mean as a couple, she meant intact as people.
I remember most of all the souls we showed each other briefly in glimpses, testing each other. Jabs and punches first with venom, then with tenderness and finally punch drunk, looking for breaking points or the other to back away and only seeing complete acceptance where there should be, where there has to be, where there always is... fear and lack of comprehension surely. But not here, not with her. She understands because they share it, the sweet, succulent edge of madness.
I told her how Mick broke things and loved to see them break. Places, gifts, people.
She told me how Philippa walked tightropes too and sometimes people fell from her rope because after all, tightropes are really only made for one walker at a time ;)
So perhaps this is the wrong place to start, in the middle with only a random meeting, I think it's the perfect place though and the madness won't let me start anywhere else.
