I have a workbench in my room I built myself when my brother was still alive The bench-top is a 5cm-thick slab of beechwood harvested in the mountains of Ardèche given to me as a gift by my old friend Ben I also have a giant TV in my room which is by a wide margin the window I look out the most Mostly I do woodwork at my workbench sometimes leatherwork or glass brass and copper inlay or Yoga clinging to the dogholes to sit deep into my hamstrings like an invisible chair pulling my vertebrae apart as far as they will go Sometimes it's waterworks like when this stupid song starts playing Running up that hill by Kate Bush out of nowhere in a random episode of Stranger Things A song I never paid no mind When I hear "if I only could I'd make a deal with God and I'd get him to swap our places" I need to pause the episode because I don't want to remember this as the time I sat there crying about a teenage sci-fi show I clear a space on my workbench as if to place my sadness upon it like a surgical patient The grief comes out of the walls the floor the PC speaker set given to me as a gift by my old friend Sid the Netflix window with Stranger Things on pause the Kate Bush song playing on Spotify over and over lyrics I'm really hearing for the first time that have little to do with what I'm going through except for that one simple line Tracing my steps to locate the source of the grief asking the patient where it hurts I know my brother used to like the song the TV show and being alive Sometimes that's all it takes I place my fists on the beechwood top mirroring each other as they open and close contract and release like the two lungs of my surgical patient like two bean-shaped kidneys like two cervical vertebrae and the space between them My tears darken the pale wood in perfect circles the perfect cone of light between my hands the slab brought down from the mountain the countless nicks and scrapes dents and gouges the fingerprints of screw-heads and drill-bits palm-prints of sky-blue water stain from all the work I have done so far Staring into the grain like an oracle wondering how much is left to be done How many breathing exercises How many declined invitations to leave the house How many of these stupid poems I flip open the battered royal blue notebook given to me as a gift by my lover Amanda smooth down a clean white page and let the wood do its work and let the water do its work
