TRACEY CHAPMAN: “The Promise”

“A healthy person has many wishes; a sick person has only one.” It’s a sentence like no other, and it blows over like a passing cloud on cloudless day. I am a sponge soaked with water; there’s no sound for the eyes to hear on a day like this. There are no other thoughts to think of except for one. My voice trembles without even opening my mouth. A restless beating, an ominous rumbling of tribal drums in the savannah. The long grass hides many dangers and we are our own worst predator. There’s a thrill in every hunt, but there’s an even bigger one in the catch. I am unarmed, as I have always been. Vultures circle above my head and draw their shadows in front of me. A smell of fire; an animal howls in the distance. Some mysterious spices on a tongue: a medicine man carries souls to long-forgotten lands behind the mountains. Reality is the most dreadful fiction; it’s an ironic grim on a warrior’s face, with some painted stripes to deter what we’re afraid of. The truth is in our dreams and nightmares; like a loose page of a dusty book that falls on the library floor, an incident in coincidence.

A feeling you believed was long buried. A cold you thought you were immune for. With the wind comes rain, with rain comes lightning, with lightning comes thunder. How long do you need to know someone before you know them? The time it takes for them to know you.
From each punch we recover faster; with each practice we go deeper into the pose. This one came hard though. And yet there’s no time to bleed in the ring.

A theory holds as long as it applies to others. You can think of a thousand reasons why, and as many reasons why not. But in the end it doesn’t matter. Be careful, I am fragile.