Forgiveness

This is one of those things that people do but never talk about. It's just not worth it.

I'm stood here, on this terrace, with a pressure-washer in my left hand. I'm surveying the stones in front of me, worn smooth by the crushing water flow like a scythe ready for the cull. In the background, someone is singing.

Time shakes. Found you at the water. At first you were my father. Now I love you like a brother. Earthquakes. Shake the dust behind you. The world at times will blind you. Still I know I'll see you there.

There's a nagging doubt in my mind, but I can't think precisely what it is. The broken-up cracks in the stonework might be bothering me, perhaps? Or the twinge in the joints of my fingers picked up from the shaking intensity of the pressure-washer? No?

Inside my chest, I notice my heart is being gripped by a stone fist. It barely has room to beat, muscle tensing over and over again. It hurts - a lot. As does the feeling of a bar laid across my back, as if I'm carrying buckets of water on a crossbar nailed to my spine.

Heartbreaks. The heavy world's upon your shoulders. Will we burn or we just smoulder? Somehow I know I'll find you there.

The singing is not something I want to listen to right now. To drown it out, I pull my fingers in almost reflexively and engage the resistant trigger. Instantly a droning buzz wasps to life in a sort of vindictive way, drilling into my ears like dental floss on a thin drillbit. This singer is forcing me to thread a needle through one ear and out the other.

The scrubbing away, the separation of dirt from stone is therapeutic. If I focus on it, I can block out the pain and the noise and be alone with the blankness that comes with lack of thought. Maybe my mind will make peace with my body. Maybe I'll be able to forget things I really want to forget.

I notice a woodlouse swimming for its life in half-centimetre-deep water, its family torn to shreds by my idle slicing with the water blade. I watch with a sensation of extreme apathy as it struggles through its own Biblical flood. I'm the Old Testament God, just throwing down random disasters whenever I feel like it. Zap. There goes a hapless snail. I feel nothing for its demise. It was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The woodlouse is still writhing in the puddle. It seems to be frothing slightly. From above, the baleful eye of God watches impassively, judging. Prove yourself worthy, it says.

The woodlouse dies three inches from salvation.

I try to release the trigger, and a few seconds later my fingers unlock and move away. The singing is there again, whirring away in the background.

Ten thousand people stand alone now, and in the evening the sun sets. Tomorrow it will rise! Time. Flies. By. They all sang along. Time. Flies. By. They all sang along.

I bend down and pick up the woodlouse in the palm of my hand, cradling its small body in warmth. I try, gently, to coax it back to life, but there's no response. The worn exoskeleton just crumbles in my hesitant embrace, falling apart into dirt and shell and rock.

I feel sad and regretful, because I've needlessly caused the death of an innocent creature. I feel senseless and blundering. It's not good.

Time. Flies. By. They all sang along.

Suddenly, I get a sense that I've been caught up in something much bigger. For just one surreal moment, stood here in this unremarkable place at this unremarkable time, I think I can see the gears of the world working, ticking life away in a clockwork grand mechanism. I see the woodlouse, being carried away on conveyors, the dust and springs and gears in my hand being recycled into something new. I see other people, faces staring or turned or moving; circling, moving closer or further away, changing shape, the gears of the world constantly improving them. All these people are being constantly altered, little pieces being taken out and put back in. One gear is replaced with another, and a person changes by that much every time.

I feel so torn up inside. Everything is shredded in my innards, whirling and churning and scraping my hollow stomach together. I am so sorry, because I did something wrong. I'm so sorry. I took away one gear, and everything realigned and now people are moving away. And I'll never see them again. Breaking up, moving apart, separating. People I thought I knew are now so different.

I thought I knew myself.

Now, as the water pools and begins to flow over the edge of the terrace, I see a new leaf, floating serenely yet ironically above clean slate. For a moment, I think I see words spelt out on its surface.

'I forgive you.'

But then it's gone, and there is water on my face, and all I can hear is the singing.

Come a little closer and you'll see. 'Cause things aren't always what they seem to be.

Come a little closer.

Come a little closer and you'll see.

I don't want forgiveness.