The Gaze
Puberty has pounced,
Painting my
Gauche,
Bumbling,
Graceless
Eleven-year-old self in
Ever more egregious,
Hormonal hues. A
Year passes. We move.
Felixstowe Beach,
Summer 1983 -
Perhaps the last time I would
Look good in skinny jeans.
Buoyant, voluble interludes
Between bouts of familial dysfunction
Punctured by a Presence that
Only I seem to be aware of.
Stranger: pallid, corpulent,
Puffy-faced, blank-eyed
Forty-year-old mother,
Unseasonably clad in
Black and brown layers –
Mute, motionless,
Expressionless, with
Evident hair loss.
My barely acknowledged
Horror, revulsion at finding myself on a
Noisy, crowded beach in
Summer has likely found its
Fleshy form.
Simile, analogy
Elude me. Incongruity:
Not the woman, but the
Mirth,
Conviviality.
Weegee. Coney Island, 1940.
Girl flashes a smile at the
Camera, while her
Drowned boyfriend is tended to by
Lifeguards. Muscled, young-buck
Rubberneckers glare back at the viewer,
Some perhaps in years to come:
Corpses themselves –
Shot up, charred, washed up - on
Utah, Omaha, Iwo Jima beaches.
Then I myself am
Rubbernecked. Executing a maladroit
Manoeuvre under a bathing towel, Changing into or out of trunks,
I lock eyes with The Gaze.
Her husband, children,
My siblings, parents
Dissolve into shits and giggles at my
Twelve-year-old awkwardness.
The Gaze is of those
Sunk up to their oxters in
Quicksand or slurry, no longer
Struggling – but surrendering.
Eyes glazed, resigned, but not vacant.
I feel Her Gaze is parsing some
Hidden portion of my psyche.
Three years later,
I meet The Gaze again,
Watching Bergman’s
Fanny and Alexander.
© Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025
This time, I’m a teenage
Alexander Ekdahl, face to face with
Aunt Elsa who –
Toad-like, mute,
Immobile, bed-ridden -
Bodies forth the joyless, oppressive
Atmosphere of the Bishop’s house.
That year, I’m riveted to my own bed for
Days on end by some
Malignant sadness.
Until my mother literally shakes me
Out of it.
Years of dysthymia, dislocation,
Desolation follow. I scrape through
School badly bruised, travel, drift,
Make it to university at twenty-one.
First-classed, but adrift again, I am
Blindsided by the first episode of
Major depression at twenty-five -
Classic age of onset, apparently.
Decades of recurrent bouts ensue.
What did The Gaze see all those
Years ago?
And who was She?
Shadow?
Kindred Spirit?
Malign Twin?
Familiar?
Witch trapped by a wicked spell?
Or simply a clinically depressed
Mother on the cusp of midlife?
I often feel I was cursed-blessed by
That Gaze.
Was it imparting some secret
Knowledge to my twelve-year-old
Self?
The Evil Eye, it seems, is
Not
Always
Malevolent.
© Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025
🙏 @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout #Undressed
#poetry: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025
#TheGaze #Depression #Adolescence #Vulnerability #IngmarBergman #FannyandAlexander
