Overgrown and Lost
For Moss Grows in Anxious Ways
The fox slept sickly through autumn fall and winter frost
All whilst the temperature dropped and dropped
Hoping spring’s rays would warm its bones
And lift them from their leafy unmade throne
To seek out flowers in their blooming week
For spring revives all that had been sleeping
In the depths of dirt, grime and the weeping
But the little fox was a wobble and a worry
They’d been gone too long and forgotten their song
To jump through all the fields and over fencing logs
That kept the world out there away from want
That moss had found its way onto their coat
In overgrown patches whilst they were lost in thoughts
It would not leave in big panicked shakings
And embedded itself deep into their empty growling gut
That it all became cunning moss, overgrown and lost
Part of the little fox, who had now started to relearn their song
In jumping steps through the melted ice of winter gone
Returning to the den, curled, when it all gets too much.
Daffodils line the grassy partings of the pavement path, all at different heights and dripping lengths, growing in their own timely ways. They sprout tucked in tight to wide open bunches, with white pearl petals to the deepest of yellows that litter when broken like scattered confetti crackers. Every year they arrive on time and light the deep growing hill with its crumbly pavements and wobbly tiles that tilt with the weight of my steps in new year's sneakers that I have hardly worn yet. They sneak a smile on my face, one I had yet to draw that day for my sluggish morning wake leaves me empty till the day starts its moving.
I wonder if I walk close enough, would I be able to catch a whiff of their smell with my broken nose that in itself catches very little from the spring fever air. The smile stays on me while I skitter carefully down deep underpass steps, skipping over puddles from the rainy weekends and slowing down for cyclists who don’t know the meaning of a bell. My steps do not stop once until my oyster card hits the station scanner with the flashing of “seek assistance” for a first, second and third time before I wrestle with the cardholder and play with different motions to quickly cross the barriers onwards. The station is quiet for the lunch hour and I stop to a calm on a platform that is longer than I recall since my last visit. I don't wait long for the whistle and wosh of train tracks, boarding quickly when the first doors open past the yellow worn-out warning line. My hands strangle my shoulder bag, whispering parting love to my mother who’s heard every breath and breathless word through long wired headphones that tangle and twist to my phone, buried deep in a winter warm coat pocket hold.
Then the phone beeps and dips into a silence, greeting me to nothingness. It doesn't take a second for darkness to replace the bright sky in the blurred scratched window glass, with smeared graffiti and rustling abandoned newspaper pages that flap with the little air that flows in the carriage. With the dark, is the jumping 5G/4G connection that snaps to a cut-through circle and empties staircase bars like music keys that halt to a grand stop.
The jittering starts with pressure in my chest, I twist the lines of my already tangled headphones as I shuffle to play music to interrupt the silent end. My saving grace is downloaded as “Train Tracks” with a turquoise tint cover of two heads with their own mind the gap line struck through between them- a tap leads to a country beat that fills the noises of my internal dread. I calm the hammering of my heart and dig my nails into my palms. I should feel comfort in small silences but it is all somehow blinding here, and I've become too vary of how ugly everything is between my distracted thoughts and mind-filling music.
For my journey was cluttered with beauty that I highlight in yellow like study notes that blur out all the other useless words. My smile is drawn, though my eyes are tired from troubled nights where sleep has not been my friend for a while. I focus on the beat of the card against the scanner then the flutter in my chest that thinks I may be stupidly stranded in a place I've known for ages, I skip over puddles glaring for I do not trust to not slip and fall in their presence or hover my hand over underpass rails and slow to see what may be lurking in the shadows of the dim-lit corners. My shoes are new and clean, for not that they have been hardly worn, but that I have hardly stepped outside to walk with my chill-blazed toes, cluttered and bruised in colour from my unmoving. I think of daffodils in their glory but see their buds pulled out and trampled by the clinging hands of children who enjoy picking from the thriving. And I think someone pulled me from my stem in the first bloom of the ending winter glaze. For reliving is a hard song to relearn when you have let worry grow to stay and are not sure how to get rid of its ways but to accept the change.
So my heart calms and the song takes over trying to hold off the overwhelming screech of wheels and flash of lightning that strikes below the carriage windows. My fingers count the stations down, calculating how many songs may play before I get to my destination- five stops, maybe 15 minutes worth of song might tumble along until it trickles down to one, as people shrug on and off. Though my legs feel weak and heavy, they fly me out of the door once the rustling robotic voice announces in static “Tottenham Court Road”, only looking back when sneakers are firmly planted on the platform floor, just to see for a moment the train wind up, doors shut, staggering to a passing go.
Songs keep playing in the hustling of the crowd, over busking ukuleles where the beats mix into a different sound of the outside and inside bounds. As I move up escalator steps, the bars return to my phone connection and the Gs join them in the moment, and I suddenly feel more relaxed than I have been for the last hour, less alone with my sos call at hand. I don't take a second to ring my mother and say - the journey has been okay, I am doing okay- for I know that though I tell my white lie, she knows I panic. It's not the train but the unfamiliar darkness and the ache of worry that won't leave me, clings to me and has morphed with me. It is like lost crumbs that will not leave your pockets, dog hairs that do not leave your jumper after washing, worry has bloomed in me during sickly winters and it will be staying for some time.
As my sneakers get more worn, mucked with dirt, headphones twisted and broken and bag strap less strangled I might get used to the motion and the stuckness in leaping out the door of home with worry in tow. In the meantime, I stand at the exit and I take a breath, headphones departed before I continue my walking with worry following.
© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian