The Frail Sisterhood.
By Paul D Robertson
Oils on canvas , 110x 42 cms.
Available for sale.
I saw her recently.
She made my restraint, my patience and determination not to become malicious... worthwhile.
She apologised. And she said "thank you."
It was more, meant more to me than I thought it could. I am so glad that she has changed, that this has grown in her... I will never have her in my life again. She will never have me.
But I am proud of how I was with her. And I think that ultimately, I DID help her. Her acknowledgment of that made me sweetly sad. Instead of bitterly sad. It is a wonderful, powerful difference. Now that is what I will remember. And not what she was whilst we were together.
This painting is an accurate rendition of one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. She was that, yes.
Her eyes, strangely, strangely, sweetly, were naturally permanently dilated. She shared this bizarre trait with another woman that I loved fiercely…
Both of them were, and remain, dangerous to me. Utterly and uniquely… separate as the poles that ice our planet, different as nails from knives; from the deadness of a shattered spine to frothy seizure to poisoned wine.
This woman is the most damaged person I have ever met. The best metaphor I have found falling from my own lips to describe her is this:
She is a running chainsaw thrown into a crowded room.
I am usually prepared to share evey ugliness and human frailty that locks me to mortality and stupidity here on this page. Absurd and dying as we all are. But I can't write about this.
I wish I could shed a few shreds of the hell the fucking HELL that she caused, boiling sick in her deadly empty head.
And there is this:
U are a princess at christmas time.
U R blood-wine,
U R and endless succession of worlds suspended in time.
You are WONDER to me
you are LUST.
Your flesh your eyes your wounds your mind.
I am breathless before you.
I am dazed.
I am thrilled.
I am PROUD that you are mine.
I will stand beside you.
I will hold your hand.
I WILL love you EXQUISITELY as we boil burn,
make, create and hurt -
Overfilled with our razored lives.
I will forgive you.
I will heal you.
I WILL.
This was a text I sent to her with whom i was obviously deeply in love. It fits PRECISELY without a character missing into one text in an old nokia.
The first line I had used in an older poem, though that was slightly different and not TO anyone. The rest was for her heart only.
She replied with
"I've read some of that before."
I wrote for her, to her... So hard and true. Open. Wound-ready. Offering. And so she almost succeeded in annihilating my will, my SELF.
She lied on a collosal scale - it was hard to believe that so much fiction could have been believed. By me. Naive isn't an adjective I would describe myself with. I wanted it to be true so much.
Like a stupid child. She lied to herself in the same manner. This is how she was able to do these things.
But I knew that she knew. When the vicious malice in her made itself known to me, it broke me in a way I have never been broken before. I am still broken. And my life is so fucking hard as it is. No really. I mean it.
When this happened I experienced a new kind of psychosis... a terrible gaping grief.
The odd thing was that she couldn't stand to see me sobbing. I made her admit it. I made her admit it. With that awful searing hurt, I forced her to admit that she knew that all that she had said was distortion and invention, that her "beliefs" and "faith" she already understood to be fiction.
Yeah. I finished the painting, eventually.
I did nothing to hurt her in return. It was hard to paint, and it took me probably a couple of hundred hours.
I will not give in to malice. I will not let ugliness make me ugly. I will not, I will NOT.
When I first showed her the almost finished painting more than a year ago, she said "I don't think it's beautiful. And I think it's really desperate of you to bring it here unfinished."
It doesn't hurt anymore. I don't like or dislike her. She does make me feel such a monumentally gullible fool, and sort of sick, in my heart, at the sadness of it all. The waste of such love and love and love.
She seems to have healed a little. I have no idea if that is the case or not...
But I am glad, I truly am, that she thanked me. That she had the courage to apologise to me. That showed me that somehow, she had become more than she was, and that it was not for nothing. Perhaps that somewhere in her terribly wounded heart, I was able to help her heal. Maybe after I was gone from her, she realised that she did care after all.
Now, because of her words of regret, because of her thanks, I guess I can believe that.
And that's enough. That it is possible.
Yeah. That's enough, for me. For now. Ah well.
I wrote a true song for her.
She SMILED for. Every. Moment. That. She listened. When i played it for her.
Just click and it will play, right click and "save as" to save it for later bits of Paul feeling sorry for himself in a musical way for listening at your leisure.
These are the lyrics.
Song for the Frail Sisterhood.
I can see your faded heart
Only Because
I can see in the dark
Behind the skin within
Your carefully
Attractive scars
Mouthing silent answers
Gently, through the glass
Where it starts
Promise me, baby
That you will cut my arms
Because I never
Never wanna have to ask
CHORUS
Bleed into me, and stay
Kiss me as you fade away
Find a way, find a way
Crying, and afraid
She wants hunger and hurting
In a black fever humming
So she is hunting in jeans
Still sticky from sinning
The un-healing taint
That deep – wound of fate
This is what she makes
This is what it takes
This is the shape
This is what she makes
This is the shape
(Overlaid with chorus)
Seven is the number
If I wanna get her any wetter
She needs me to hit her
She aches, she aches
For a hammer
CHORUS X 2
The torn edge of the night
Makes you think that maybe, maybe it might
Warm the cold streets and your bare feet
Freezing small and white
Soaking the edge of the sky
The bloody, beautiful night
The sweetness the softness
The toxic… endless NIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGHT
The way you live your life
The torn edge of the night
My love… my love.
Close your blind, dying eyes.