Article - Magazine

Published by Oh Magazine Issue 61

A Quiet Song

It’s a quiet song really, almost gentle in sound. It is not a call to arms, not a rousing battle cry, the anger and despair did not travel well in the lyrics that came to mind when I sat

down armed with a pencil, a bottle of wine in an empty flat that night.

Slowly it fades, disappears in the dark

ache and emptiness fight

to fill the space in my heart

I did not know I was going to write that song, I did not set out to recollect and describe the events that took place when I was fifteen and left an imprint in my life during all the years

that followed; sometimes staying inaudibly in the background, almost forgotten, then creeping up on me, unexpectedly rearing it’s ugly head, punching me in the gut, leaving

me quietly suffering or raging angrily, howling at it’s continuing influence on my existence...

In the morning light

the house no wiser to the secrets of the night

Sometimes writing is cathartic, yet, sometimes it opens wounds that create a bigger and bigger mess, like a cesspit of thoughts all muddled together making it difficult to see

through the fog. Frozen. The guilt. The questions. The hushing. The quiet. The nothingness. The desperation to somehow fill the hole that was created not just by an

unwanted physical act but possibly more so by the silence that followed.

So I lie back and close my eyes

and I hold my breath and wish to die

How the endless tug of war between being frozen and needing to escape became a silver thread throughout my life. Trying desperately to stay in control, to perform my part, always

ready to flee, though steadily becoming more stuck before breaking point would strike again. Always looking for something elusive to fill the emptiness.

How ironic too that after giving birth, incidentally not even through the originally designed exit passage of my body, my muscle memory reverted straight back to twenty years

before, that particular event that unwittingly had shaped so much of my life already, and tried to shut the pathway down. Something I had not even considered to be a possibility,

naively perhaps, though I am pretty sure the subject was not covered in any of innumerable books on birth I devoured prenatally.

As it burns right through my body yet I’m cold

Like a winter frost comes around in spring and kills everything

The place so sacred, full of light, heat, power, the place where love should reside, instead trampled by intruders with bad intentions. How many of us have been in that situation,

abused, defiled, uneasy, silent, or not silent but made to keep quiet.

It’s only it’s my body it’s only my body it’s only my body he got

It’s a quiet song really, gentle almost in sound, ‘only my body’, like a mantra, repeating and repeating,

until the lie becomes the truth to carry us through the rest of our lives with less of the burden,

reclaiming that body with love and love alone,

from ourselves firstly,

then eventually from others,

on request and by exclusive invitation only .

Cursive text taken from the song Only My Body from the album In Between The Silence by Francesco Lo Castro and Rosalie Genay.