Windchimes

Those windchimes, outside my window They've been singing, nonstop.

It's a song i know the melody to but i don't have the words
Only a memory, an echo of what they should have been
Or what they used to be.
I told you, one day, i wouldn't leave
I said i wouldn't leave you
I didn't leave you.
I left... i left someone else; i left them, because i did not make my promise
To a dark-hearted jackass

Metaphors describing others not unlike yourself as bulbous grey savannah animals with great trunks
Screaming with your hands as things flew in fear away from your angry feet.
All, all my fault, all of it
I didn't love, didn't love enough to know, every moment, every feeling and future thought
I am the causer of hurt.

The windchimes are singing more
Told me; 'girl, there's a future beyond this'
And must be, because they chime without wind, in my cold basement room
Dancing with feathery gusts from the past or future, and i know they know.
The zephyrs that whisper between hollow metal tubes are laden light with history
And her story
Which became part of my story.

Summer days... became fall haze.
Became winter daze, clouds falling around my head as snow should have from the sky
(though, it was a warm winter)
And i sat many nights in my room, arms around my pillow, back pressed to three more and pretending it was her heat that warmed me
Not the cold concrete wall.
I cried. Harsh, old, lonely, exasperated, hurt tears. She never saw them, or if she did,
They went mentally unseen, blocked from mind and soul by anger at nothing.
Nothing at all, it was just there. The anger.

The chime still singing, bearing a faint promise like
April showers bring May flowers.
What happens if it doesn't rain in April, do the flowers never bloom?
If the flowers, never blooming, do not open up and expose
Yellow pollen-rich innards bright like little suns,
Does everything connected, six degrees apart, die?
Does everything just stop?

Our showers, they never came,
The sun never became unclouded but the dark, looming mass of sky never lifted from my head all that winter
Dark, thunderous words shook me
Wounded me, sent me retreating or, worse, to her rescue. I had no time to rescue me.
It was on my head if i should fail her.

I did fail her. I failed her by fighting back.
My cloudcover was breaking, and an oppressed sun behind it stood waiting
Angry, flaring.
Solar tapers bristling at the thought of being shut away again
And the chimes, they went mad now as the sun blew a hot wind at the cloudcover and sent it
Scuttling away, like a frightened spider.

The sun, my sun, it burned bitterly, and caught her off guard when the usual placid partner
Became just as hot in her retorts. She didn't know
What to do, and the pattern continued to break
Because in this dance i had entered a new step she had not counted on.
I held the sun in my chest, below my heart
The effervescent warmth billowing my heart like a sail,
Filling as many cracks as it could,
Carrying me up past the remaining clouds that again threatened to block me out.

I evolved, then,
Drew out from beneath my shaking hands and confronted hers
Then, just as suddenly, possibly in the middle of another fruitless defense, i left.
Left behind the needless anger, the clouds
The items fleeing from her angry feet
And walked out, into the daylight,
To stand beneath the windchimes
And sing about the future.