Heartache by Ian C. Smith

Photo by Simon Leonardo

Heartache

Karen Dalton sings Something on your mind on You Tube, those sweet fiddles tugging at my heartstrings, her throaty voice a summons as sure as a tolling bell’s.  To what?  The churning past?  I have flexed scornful wit on some pop lyrics.  Now her threnody evokes old iron bridges crossed slowly, sultry light flickering through latticework.  This is especially so in the throbbing drumbeat intro before her plaintive drawn-out Yesterday. Karen is headed for dead-set trouble, another doomed singer.  I want to hurry back, wrap her in my arms, keep her from leaving all her dreams behind even as she pours her wounded life into music, save myself yet more of this driven remorse.

In their fire’s last burnished light, some warmth remaining, I picture a couple who combined art and career, working together but offset by yearning, and his flaws.  At first, he drank, argued, laughed, drastic panic attacks a scourge slouching in wait.  He also liked music and movies as their partnership fell in thrall to increasing tensions.  Given to excess, in speech and gesture, he was sometimes fired with a bitter fervour due to blows during his loveless childhood that she believed was her cross to bear.  Volatile, hurt, he resented her eye-rolling common sense responses to his unreason.

Although he felt his youthful chances were squandered they had enough money and energy to seem modest models of success, he with his much-travelled trunk of journals and notebooks, his dangerous belief in saying  what really happened, what he thought, her with her caring profession, and, following her own loving childhood, good deeds.  But she could not grow wings, fly to the coast of his dreams and nightmares.

Displayed photos dating them, they relied on routine, death a blur beckoning  distantly, edged towards redundancy by youth and progress, forgetfulness a stealthy burglar.  As their days sailed away, no longer beloved, they gleaned what they could from co-operation. This was their end-game, that mysterious shaky swirl, time no longer on their side.  After dark in bed they turned to stone instead of each other, listening to the old house creaking.  Above these effigies cold stars glimmered in space.

In soft rain driving home to my house, my large bed, tyres hissing, lights appearing in roadside dwellings where fireside drinks might be shared, Moby’s Mistake starts, that slow build-up redolent with regret, then the beat, insistent as sadness swoops and I tap the steering wheel.  Hammering my heart, that sustained pulse from The Next Three Days movie soundtrack conjures past chaos when, at night’s brink, fire in an iron grate dampened, smouldering words formed into flames in a withering scene.  The sky gods battering me now, wipers losing it, lightning’s refraction performs on night’s screen as Chekhovian characters arrive in my mind’s welter nodding knowingly.  I imagine being borne beyond this ache, on and on through a dark dense forest to stanch pain, find solace, if I could claw my way back to the ghostly past as. Don’t let me make the same mistake again repeats.

© Ian C. Smith

Ian C Smith’s work has been published in BBC Radio 4 Sounds,Cable Street,The Dalhousie Review,Griffith Review, Honest Ulsterman, Offcourse, Stand,&,Westerly. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.