Pale and Blue

Written by Maya Heinecke

I - The Way Way Up

I’m looking out my window
At the most impossible of views.
I’m looking up
At everyone I’ve ever known.

I’m looking up
At a warm summer evening;
The last summer
That I still loved my Dad.
I remember where I’m lying;
On the bottom bunk of a cheap bed.

I can hear the ocean.

My little sister is asleep on the floor next to me,
She’s snoring quietly.
Normally, I’d hate it,
But I remember,
Everything felt so right to me in that moment;
I didn’t dare wake her.

My eyes were sore; I’d been crying.
I missed my Mum.
I lay there still,
two metres or less from my sister.
I wiped my teary eyes, looked
Out the open front door,
And I just stared for a while.

Staring like I do now.
Staring reminds me of that day,
But then I remember where I am;
What I’m doing;

I’m staring up at everything I’ve ever known.

I’m staring up
At the hot tiles from my grandparents' pool:
My sisters are with me,
We’re too scared to get out of the water.
A 41-degree day, school canceled.
The sun-soaked tiles scorched our feet,
So we didn’t dare move.

We swam around for hours
Shooting the shit,
Mum wasn’t around,
So we said whatever we wanted.
We felt like grown-ups.

We got out at dark,
With our beet-red backs,
And the cooling tiles
Kissed our burnt feet
And we laughed for a while.

Laughing like I am now.
I miss my sisters most of all.
Especially my younger one.
Mum used to tell me all the nice things she said about me.
That, of course,
Was back when Mum would still talk to me.

Now I’m looking up at Mum.

II - She Hates My Name

I told Mum in an argument
That she hardly knew me.
What kind of a way is that to talk to your own mother?
She told me she hated my name;
Not the boy I raised!
Then I told her I was going away;
And that was the end.

Was I right to leave?
I’m crying as I stare, now;
At everyone I’ve ever known.

I’m not the boy she raised,
Nor was I ever.
Nothing matters up here.

III - And So I Left

I can’t really tell,
Everything’s just so blue up here.
So I’m staring up,
Focusing, honing in,
Trying to make out the shape of the life I lived.

I think I can see it,
I’m staring up at the life
Where I got paid to be an actor.

Give me an Oscar!
People didn’t even believe
When I told them I was retiring.

But you’re not acting,
This is who you are.
When you’ve been acting for so long,
You forget who you were in the first place.
I’m too good a performer,
Couldn’t even convince her that the me she knew
Was merely a character.

IV - Kill Your Baby

“Be ready to kill your baby”,
I was told all throughout school.

In some ways
Mum birthed that caricature of me.
She gave it the toys it would play with,
The shows it would watch,
The lessons it would learn.
But, she was never ready to kill that baby
And love the real person behind it.

V - A Room

With my hand on the window,
I’m remembering
The windows and the views,
And things are looking blurry.
My clear-cut view of the planet
Is not what it was 5 minutes ago, no,
Now I can see
A faded memory of my childhood bedroom.

I can make out a few things.
The sun, bleeding through drapes.
Dust, settling on the surface of a glass of water,
The corner of a book a child used to write ‘stories’ in.

This book was a good friend.
I’d told it silly soliloquies,
I thought everything had to rhyme.
Here’s a title named “To Mum”:

Hello mum dads name is michael
I love you motorcycle

VI - Bottlecap Boy

I’m looking around now;
Thinking of the streets;
The texture on my feet;
That gnawed at my skin
As I ran from those kids.

Using their stick slingshots
To shoot the tops of soda pop bottles.
I’d run and run
Until my feet would bleed;
And then they rode their bikes back home
Recharging for tomorrow.

When I was really young,
I had no idea how to write,

So, the next best thing was movies.

I was 7, maybe 8,
When Dad dozed off
I stuck my grubby little hand into his DVD cabinet
And pulled out “A Fistful of Dollars”

I knew I was too young to,
But I wanted to feel grown up,
And before I knew it, I had a little crush.

Something about;
His furrowed brow,
Nonchalant smirk,
The way he looked like,
He was covered in dirt;
I didn’t know if I wanted to be him,
Or something else.

Chatter on playgrounds
Had natural progressions;
People would ask
“Who do you have a crush on?”
I’d say he went to a different school.

How silly of me!
A cute little kid;
I coped with the bullies
By being in love with a cowboy…
Are there cowboys in space?
I guess I’ll find out,
But at least I can laugh
As I'm looking around.

VII - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

And looking around,
I remember clearly
The times I saw him,
And wondered if he’d love me dearly.

I remember the things I’d tell myself
If I were born a girl
Then he would hold me in his arms for a reason other than saying goodbye
And he would love me the way I longed to love him.

Would he love me
If I could bear a child?
Is that what’s missing?

The way he looked down at me at parties,
He made me feel so small,
And I wanted nothing more than to hold him close
And tell him how beautiful his heart was.

I went home, told myself;
I’ll conjure up some crystal orb;
Some fantastical thing
And look into our future,
A future where the nights never ended,
A night where he’d introduce me to his family
And they wouldn’t ask me how to spell my name,
A night, a future,
Where he was mine.

I waited for weeks and months,
For that warm look, for him to finally see through my skin
But we’d hug goodbye, and that would be all.

I guess it’s my fault for doing nothing.

VIII - Starseeker

After rubbing my eyes, everything is clearer -
I’m no longer in that vessel
But I’m back in my room.
My body is there, waiting for me.
I can finally see it.

A body.

Nothing more, nothing less,
That body is not me, no,
For I am over here across the room,
So the body is just a body.
A vessel for my soul

As incredible as the body is,
It can never be the soul,
It will never cross the lines that connect;
Waves that lap at the shore
They will never become sand.
I will never be my body;
Even if people want me to be.

Before I shake my own hand,
Before I reenter,
I must consider:

Hours ago, floating above everything I’ve ever known,
I would’ve been happy to stay there until the sun exploded.
Away from the cares of life,
But then I could never see that sun set.
I would never act on my dreams,
I would never get to meet those I’m yet to love,
I would never live just as my sister would have wanted me to.

I think often about how it would be nice to join her in the stars,
To float alongside her, to laugh, to cry,
I may never hear her snore again.

But I’m grateful I did in the first place.

I reach out to shake my hand,
And the two of us touch.
I look deep into my eyes,
And Mum’s baby is finally dead.