bruceadams - Hello Poetry

_A text for five voices._ Note on text: For formatting reasons, this should be read on a full screen, or in landscape mode on a mobile. i. Blank copy I look out of the window at the houses as they pass and they don’t so much slide past or glide past the motion isn’t smooth. They sort of click past. They tick past, dit-dit-dit: House after house after house after house dit-dit-dit-dit-dit My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough to keep up with all the houses as they pass. It’s 10 o’clock when I arrive at my office and no-one is there yet and I turn on my computer. I sort of just sit there for quite a long time. Then at 10.37 I print a document I’ve been working on and I pick up my mug and I go to the kitchen where the printer is and I put the kettle on. I log on to the printer but instead of pressing Print I press Copy instead. The machine whirs The light goes across And out comes this copy this Copy of nothing. I pick it up from the cradle. It’s warm. And I hold it and I look at it and I think: This is a copy of nothing. And since it is no longer an empty piece of paper but now something more something imbued I don’t put it back in the paper tray and I don’t put it in the bin. I carry it carefully with my tea back to my office and put it Carefully on my desk. I close the door. Usually when I arrive and no-one is there I keep the door open for a bit. It’s my way of letting people know I’m here. It also helps me get a sense of what’s going on in the building which students are there and what they’re doing and once I’ve got a decent enough idea or if there’s someone around I don’t really feel like helping I close the door. Today it is quiet. It is a Friday. Fridays are quiet. It is the seventh of March. It is 2014. I’m looking out of the window as I recall without much interest that yesterday was my father’s sixty-first birthday. The buses tick past the window. Without really thinking I roll down the blind Until the window is as blank as my copy of nothing. I look at it but I don’t sit down yet. My computer makes a noise and a purple box tells me I have a meeting in thirty minutes. Oh shut up I tell it out loud. Now I realise that I never did print my document so I go back to the printer and the file is still there waiting for me and I press Print All and out it comes and the piece of paper looks Obnoxious scrawled over in heavy black print and ****** coloured columns and smelling Smelling of toner. For someone who claims to be conscious of the environment I print excessively. But only at work. It’s the combination of it being free (or at least, no cost to me) and that feeling you get when you swipe your access card to log in to the printer and tap the screen dit-dit-dit to choose this or that. It feels to me like being a grown-up. It’s intoxicating. I don’t want to go to the meeting and I’m suddenly annoyed by this ***** piece of paper which I ***** up and throw in the bin. **** it. Not even in the recycling. **** it. Who cares. What difference could it possibly make whether I throw this piece of paper which I will now have to print again in the black part of the bin for waste or the green part of the bin for recycling. I go back to my computer and press Print but this time I keep clicking my mouse ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit Yeah. ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit And I go back to the printer and the name of the document comes up on the built-in screen dozens and dozens of times the same name of the same document and I tap Print All. And as the machine spits out clone after clone I mutter under my breath: **** it. Yeah. Then out loud: **** it. Yeah. And as I throw them in the bin and go back for more I think I’m going to buy a car. Yeah. And I’m going to drive my car to work and when I finish work I’m going to drive it to a big supermarket a hypermarket a super hyper mega market where I will buy and buy and buy, and on my way home I will buy petrol to put in my car And I will go on holiday I will book all those last minute deals on the internet And go to Turkey or Lanzarote or Corfu for a hundred or a couple of hundred pounds, every month maybe And I’ll fly there on a big plane. I’ll soar over the ocean on a big plane. And when I come back I’ll soar over all those people outside Stansted Airport All those people With banners Moaning and complaining and protesting Banners saying things like I don’t know “Down with planes” And as the flight attendant smiles goodbye I’ll think yeah. Down with planes. And I’ll drive my car home and I will stop worrying about everything. I go back to my office. I retrieve one copy of my document from the bin and I put it on top of my copy of nothing. Whereas before the document offended me now I have difficulty telling the difference between the two. My colleague arrives and she tells me about the motorway. She’s always telling me about the motorway. I think about my car I’m going to buy and I think about being on the motorway. I think about being on that part of the M25 where the planes are so low you duck as they thunder over you and they come in rapid succession dit dit dit rapid eye movement radar. I think about being stuck in traffic there and the air thick with exhaust fumes mixing with the air around Heathrow and all those tons of jet fuel from the planes zooming over Blink and you miss them but always another follows. I go to my meeting. I realise that I have picked up my blank copy along with the document I printed for the meeting. Someone says they wish I’d printed more than one copy as it turns out it would be useful for everyone to have one and I laugh in their face without explaining myself. I make notes on it. My copy of nothing. Without really realising I’ve scribbled notes on it but as I look at my spidery black biro handwriting and think with some real despair about how I have mindlessly destroyed something pure the notes disappear into the paper and it is clean again. ii. Ringing sea My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough. What I’m looking at my rational brain tells me is a video of two people having *** I have seen that before. But what I’m actually watching is a video of my husband having *** with another woman. And my eyes don’t refresh the image fast enough So I keep seeing his face. The whole picture melts away and I just see his face Which belongs to me. It’s my face. I – own it. It’s my- my- my- And it freezes there just his face is all I can see then the video continues for a split second then freezes again His face His face His face It’s him It’s him It’s him. I stop the video and I put the phone down on the table and I breathe very deeply and every time I blink, between every saccade there is his face a face I know intimately and it’s looking away from me. I turn on the television. It is Saturday. He is flying back from Asia on Tuesday. I have until then to what? The sound and light from the television flicker over me And I sort of just empty, Quietly, like a balloon disappearing into the sky. I don’t know what I’m going to do but for now that’s fine. The brown armchair swallows me up and I cry for two hours without really noticing. The cookery programme I’m not watching finishes and I think the news is about to come on so I turn off the TV and I put on my shoes and I go down the stairs and out of the house and I get in my car. It’s raining and I just sit there. Without starting the engine I flick on the windscreen wipers: Dit / dit. Dit \ dit. Dit / dit. It takes less than three seconds for them to pass from one side of the windscreen to the other. And I get this feeling this unexplainable feeling that I want to crawl inside that moment when the wipers are moving from one side of the screen to the other. I flip down the sun shield and look at myself in the mirror. There are two lipsticks in the glove compartment. I pick the darker one and apply it carefully sensually. I start the car. West London ebbs away to the motorway My car is silver and in the rain it feels invisible I don’t know where I’m going I follow words on signposts I recognise the shape of without really reading them and I keep driving I let my eyes come away from the road and watch the fields and trees tick past like cells of film and I look at the cars on the other carriageway and I notice they’re all silver like mine (only mine is invisible) and I duck as a Boeing 777 soars over near the M4 interchange and let myself scream soundlessly under the roar of its engines. I wonder where it came from. I think about the people on board. I think about their mobile phones and all the *********** there must be on them and I realise how many videos there must be in the world of people having *** I take the M23 past Gatwick Airport the motorway ends but I keep driving until finally I come to the sea. No-one is here because it’s March and it’s raining. I have always loved the sea. Not sailing or swimming or surfing Just being near it, for me it’s a spiritual experience. I’ll lie on the stones and gaze at the sky for hours but not today. There are some flowers tied to a railing somebody has drowned. Presumably they never found a body to bury. The awfulness of that strikes me like a stone. It’s the not knowing. The lack of 100% concrete total proof. I take my phone out of my handbag. But I know now. The shingle crunches underneath my flat shoes. Now I know. The cold burns my ears and the wind picks up as I get closer to the water the tide slips serpentine up the stones white-edged beckoning me. Without realising I’ve slipped out of my shoes but the stones do not hurt my coarse feet and the wind howling now catches me behind my knees quickening my stride. The spit curls around my toes. And then I catch myself wondering whether my husband will call me or text me when he lands and I hurl my phone into the sea. On the drive home I listen to the radio. The news is dominated by the Crimean conflict and the referendum that’s coming up there. Florence Nightingale is all I can think about when they talk about Crimea. Until recently I never even knew where it was. At school you only learn about Florence Nightingale not the geography not the conflicts not Ukraine’s edges so charred by invasion and, subsequently, explosion. We live in so many war zones. and I’m wondering what else I never learned about when the story changes and now they are talking about a plane. A plane is missing between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing and the blood drains out of me. It isn’t like floating away like a balloon this time it’s like plunging off a cliff. And at once I see with brilliant, burning clarity my phone, ringing, on the sea bed The light from the screen illuminates the stormy water but I can’t see the name: I can’t see who’s calling. I need to know. I need to know it’s him. I drive back at twice the speed limit. In the dark the flowers look menacing and half-dead; my shoes fall off in the same place But the tide is in so the whole beach looks different. I’m up to my waist but my top half is as wet as my bottom half because the rain is torrential and I can still hear the phone ringing but I can’t see the light in the sea. and I howl his name but the wind carries it away soundlessly and I can’t tell if I’m further out or if the tide’s further in and the ringing grows louder as the current takes me powerfully by the waist and the stars rush by overhead. iii. Acid rain Every time I blink, between every saccade I see a brilliant but infinitesimally brief flash of colour. Purple or green I think. One on top of the other. It’s hard to tell for sure because they’re so brief. It’s like when you look at a light bulb for too long or stare directly at the sun. I see it sometimes when I’m on my bike or on a really big rollercoaster going downhill at 100 miles an hour the wind blasting through me the screams whirling through the air. But I’m not on a rollercoaster, I’m sat very still it’s Monday afternoon and I’m at school. I haven’t said a single word to a single person today. I didn’t even answer my name in the register. I feel a bit dizzy like everything is turning together but I’m on a different axis? I think the bell goes, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I leave anyway and no-one stops me. Outside in the sunshine the flashes of colour are several thousand times brighter. In the next lesson I slip in my earbuds and it looks like the teacher is singing the words. I put on the most obscene song I can find. I must have it on too loud because eventually she notices and she forces me to give her the headphones. This is the first time someone has spoken to me today it feels a bit surreal but the world stops spinning a bit. After school I go into the supermarket on Wigmore Lane the enormous white of it is tinged in green and purple and all I want is to buy a drink I have a feeling of exactly the kind of drink I want but I can’t find the right one even though the fridge must be longer than the driveway of my house. Racks of newspapers and magazines clamour for my attention the only real colour in this great white warehouse of a store red tops and blue spreads and green and purple and green and purple and green and purple… They’re talking about that missing plane in the news and they keep using the same phrase. They’re talking about the people on board the missing plane and they keep saying Missing presumed dead. Not dead dead. Presumed dead. I start wondering what it’s like to be both dead and alive at the same time, as if all the people on board that plane are like Schrödinger’s cat (cats) and we won’t know whether they’re dead or alive until we find the plane and pull it out of the sea and look inside so until then they’re both. Out in the car park I count the planes as they descend onto the runway less than a mile away. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, I figure about a hundred and eighty a plane maybe, which means fifteen hundred people just arrived in Luton. Nobody comes to Luton for the scenery. Soon they’ll be gone, A town haunted by a ghost population of thousands an hour. filtered onto the trains and buses and out from the sprawling car parks to the motorway, and onto connecting flights back into Europe but none of them will stay in Luton Missing presumed dead. As I bike through Luton I think it might not be so strange to be dead and alive at the same time. I’ve lived here my whole life and the whole place which is a ******** moves with the mundanity of machinery like the big car factories by the airport the lights on, the production lines rolling but all a bit automatic and lifeless. But in the airport, it’s different. The air, with its artificial chill, hangs with a faint shimmer and the people here move purposefully, and with charge excitedly or dejectedly but not neutrally heading for the gates where they are sealed two hundred a time into airtight tubes like Schrödinger’s cat: dead and alive in the air; one or the other on the ground. My teachers say I have an “odd way of looking at things”. I leave my bike outside without chaining it up and go into the terminal. In a café in the check-in hall I find exactly the drink I want and I pay £2.75 for it. I look at the departure boards. Edinburgh. Bonn. Marseilles. A green light flashes next to each gate as it opens green and purple green and purple Missing presumed dead The flashes of colour are growing brighter every time I move my eyes a green and purple streak follows behind like a jet stream but the bustle and activity of the airport is so much that I can’t keep my eyes still so they keep darting this way and that until my vision is painted over green and purple. The streaks roll over each other like clouds of acid rain. This is the final call for flight 370 to– My bike is gone when I go back outside The front of the terminal is a plateau of thousands upon thousands of cars and it’s probably in one of them but I’ll never know which. The car parks reach all the way back to the runway. Green and purple acid rain from all the jet fuel mixed with the air melts a hole in the fence and I slip through moving purposefully with charge across the green and purple grass scorched by a hundred thousand landings a hundred thousand people arriving in Luton And there on the tarmac glinting in the rain surrounded by blinking amber there is my bike its black handlebars spread like the wings of a jet plane. I duck as an Airbus screams in just a few feet over my head the rush from the engine lifting the soles of my feet from the ground. I pick up the bike and start pedalling pedalling down the runway pedalling towards the blinking amber. It feels light, nimble, fast the tyres take the asphalt with ease. And the faster I go the lighter I feel the acid rain eats away at my clothes and they melt off my body and pool on the runway below, Lighter and lighter until… The wheels lift away from the ground and in the air I am dead and alive and maybe nobody will ever see me again. iv. Burning sky The faster I go, the lighter I feel. I’ve taken the night watch and the yacht is cruising across the Indian Ocean penetrating the black abyss like a white bullet and the lights in the portholes send shimmering white bullet shapes for miles across the endless ink. What? We’re not going very fast at all But it feels like any minute we might drop off the edge of the world. I hope we do. I feel light and dizzy and irrational and I feel aware of being light and dizzy and irrational and I wonder if this is what going mad feels like. Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life? I feel like that a lot lately. Marc is sleeping. We didn’t speak much today. I can’t really remember how long it’s been since we left Victoria but the fight we had there in a bistro by the port we said things we said things that we can’t take back. The Seychelles were stifling. The heat was stifling. He was stifling. And the people were stifling the people kept talking about pirates. They kept warning us about pirates. You’re sailing where they say You must be careful they say It’s notorious they say I have fantasies about being kidnapped by pirates. Not stupid Johnny Depp pirates with *** and parrots, no Real pirates. Nasty pirates. With dark snarls and AK-47s. When we were at sea off the Horn I’d see things on the horizon Dots or lights I couldn’t make out And I’d imagine the rifle against my neck Their hot breath Chains and ransoms. I’d wonder how much we’d be worth. If we’d make national news. Would it be David Cameron to announce, regrettably, we don’t negotiate with pirates, or would it be someone less important? Maybe just the foreign secretary. What is the worth of my life at the end of a steel barrel? But it would only be a buoy, or a plane on the horizon, and I would get into bed with Marc disappearing under the covers like a different kind of hostage. I oh I Sorry I’m crying. I don’t know when I started crying. The thing is I don’t know if it’s me breaking the marriage or the marriage breaking me. I’m watching everything literally fall to pieces and for all I know it’s me with the detonator. And then everything literally falls to pieces My mug of coffee falls from my hand shatters on the deck and the sea rears up nightmarishly. Above me a long orange **** of flame is burned into the sky. No, really. That’s not a metaphor. There is fire in the sky. It’s about a mile up and a mile away. Look. There. **** **** **** **** What is that? Marc! I call for Marc. Marc! There is fire in the sky. – _Katherine._ Fire in the sky. Fire in the Fire in – _Katherine._ Fire – _Katherine._ What Marc, what? – _Are you awake?_ I think so. – _You were calling out again._ Calling – _Calling out. You were shouting._ What where What time is it? Where – _Dubai. We’re in Dubai. It’s 7._ _They delayed again while you were sleeping._ Dubai? – _Katy I really think you should see a doctor._ Don’t call me that. – _Pardon?_ Katy. Don’t call me that. Like – _Like what?_ Everything’s okay. – Everything’s not okay. – _There’s_ _doctors. You’re not well. You’ve been confused since,_ _well actually since before it even happened._ You think I’ve been confused. – _Not right._ _Not you._ You’re **** right. – _Forget it._ Thank you. – _Go back to sleep. **** – _Are you still seeing it?_ _The plane? On fire._ _You’re dreaming about it, aren’t you?_ Yes. – _It’s affecting you?_ I’m just unhappy, Marc. – _That’s not just it though is it?_ What’s that supposed to mean? – _Something about seeing that_ _plane has scared you._ We don’t know it was the plane. The one that – – _No. But, right place, right time._ _They said_ Maybe. – _It’s still a coincidence._ _It’s not_ What – _A sign._ _From god._ _Or_ _whatever._ _Whatever you think it means._ _Katherine._ The thing I don’t know, Marc is if I’m more scared that it was the plane or that it wasn’t. – Imagine. Vanishing. Into thin air. – _I know._ No, you don’t. Disappearing into thin air Or falling out of it. – _Falling._ You can’t imagine that. – _I can._ – _I can, Katy._ _I ******* can_ _Imagine._ _Falling._ _Disappearing._ _Into thin air._ ******* _invisible._ _I am_ _right_ ******* here,_ _Katherine._ I see you. I see you Marc. But you’re not solid. I’m not solid. See? It passes right through. Now you see me. Now yo– v. 2015 Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life? The hotel room here in Singapore is almost identical to the room I had in Mexico City. The heat feels the same and it’s the same nondescript decoration which doesn’t really belong to any time or culture. It gives me a headache. The neutrality of it. As I check my messages I remember I’m not in Singapore. I’m in Kuala Lumpur. I haven’t been home for nearly three weeks now. It’s ridiculously late The IOC conference is at six thirty and I’ve been asleep all day. I get dressed and grab my camera and leave the hotel with a large, black coffee. At the press call I see a man from Reuters I recognise. The coffee here is terrible. I talk to him about his family his daughter is four now he’s shaved off his beard since I last saw him and he’s moving, he says, near me apparently to Southend. “London Southend” he jokes with a roll of his eye and inverted commas. I say yeah that’s quite near me then move away to take a phone call. Inside the press conference there are ten people at the table the women are all wearing identical powder blue suits which strikes me as idiosyncratically Asian for no good reason. The men all wear simultaneous translation headphones but the women don’t. I wonder if this is because they speak better English than the men or if it just isn’t considered necessary to translate for them. They have given the Winter Olympics to Beijing. I wonder what is lost between the Mandarin spoken by the mayor of Beijing and the English spoken by the translator. The space between words. The space between looking left and looking right. It’s a nice atmosphere in the cool air-conditioned room. I’m struck by how nice everyone is except for the British delegates including the man from Reuters who speculates that the voting was rigged. A while later someone else calls it a “farce”. I get a photograph of the IOC President’s face as it falls and email it to my office from my seat. Outside, the Petronas towers rise above the conference centre like enormous empty silos. This is my first time in Kuala Lumpur the last city I have to visit before I go home. I get in a taxi and say the name of my hotel and the city flashes by. I look out of the window at the buildings as they pass and they don’t so much slide past or glide past the motion isn’t smooth. They sort of click past. They tick past, dit-dit-dit: Building after building dit-dit-dit-dit-dit My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough to keep up with all the buildings as they pass. The taxi stops and I pay seventeen ringgit and get out: it has gone by the time I realise this is not my hotel. I don’t know where I am but I was in the taxi long enough to know that I am some distance from the centre of the city. I look up at the name of the hotel the driver has taken me to and the English transliteration is very similar to the name of the hotel I am staying in. I go inside. There’s a nightclub in the hotel I order Glenfiddich double, cut with water. not because I like it but because there’s something about scotch that feels moneyed heavy amber liquid in heavy-bottomed glasses it helps me buy into this idea of the travelling businessman even though that’s a lie. I’m just a man who takes pictures. And I want to go home. I sit at the bar which is as long as my driveway. I swirl my glass and watch the amber legs trickle down the sides. A moving light above it hits the gloss black surface with an open white like the early morning sun on my gravel as I get into my car. A girl from here, young enough to be my daughter, is talking to me. She points out her friends and I half-wave, uneasily and she asks what I’m drinking. A news alert on my phone says a piece of plane wreckage washed up on Réunion in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar and south of the Seychelles. The girl seems nice. She says her name is Dhia it means “glowing”. She doesn’t seem to want anything, certainly not *** her friends have disappeared so I dance with her. As we dance I see something in her eyes that is at once both young and endlessly wise. She has deep brown eyes exactly the colour of earth and a small mouth which smiles brilliantly. In the half-light they open up to me like pools and I imagine swimming in them. Even though she’s only nineteen, twenty-one at most, there is something about her that’s maternal spiritual nourishing. She asks me what I’m doing in Kuala Lumpur and I tell her I don’t know. She asks me what I did today and I tell her I slept then took some photographs. You’re a photographer, she says, and I shrug then she leans into my ear and says don’t tell anyone. What I say and she says I’m a princess. And I look into her eyes and she isn’t lying. She says no-one is going to recognise her but just in case she isn’t supposed to be seen drinking. Who would I tell I say to her. She grins and finishes her beer and it’s true no-one is looking at her but she’s the most magnetic person in the room. In the taxi I say the name of my hotel extremely slowly and the driver replies in perfect English yes sir, I know where you mean. Kuala Lumpur ticks by in electric darkness. I flick through the news as we drive I see the photo I took this evening about a dozen times or more. There is something bitter about the tone in all the British press when they talk about the Olympics as if: Beijing get to do it twice? What about us? I think about a country with a quarter of the world’s population and I think about the tiny little island I’ve come from and I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt. The aircraft wing that washed up in Réunion is from a Boeing 777, they say. The same type of aircraft as the one that went down last year. The one they never found. It was going from here to Beijing. Last communication at 1.19am. And it’s at that time precisely my phone rings. It’s my boss in London she says the Chinese Olympic Committee are scheduling press conferences. It looks like I’m going to Beijing.

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Sep 24, 2023

Sep 24, 2023 at 3:34 PM UTC

Saccades

_A text for five voices._ Note on text: For formatting reasons, this should be read on a full screen, or in landscape mode on a mobile. i. Blank copy I look out of the window at the houses as they pass and they don’t so much slide past or glide past the motion isn’t smooth. They sort of click past. They tick past, dit-dit-dit: House after house after house after house dit-dit-dit-dit-dit My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough to keep up with all the houses as they pass. It’s 10 o’clock when I arrive at my office and no-one is there yet and I turn on my computer. I sort of just sit there for quite a long time. Then at 10.37 I print a document I’ve been working on and I pick up my mug and I go to the kitchen where the printer is and I put the kettle on. I log on to the printer but instead of pressing Print I press Copy instead. The machine whirs The light goes across And out comes this copy this Copy of nothing. I pick it up from the cradle. It’s warm. And I hold it and I look at it and I think: This is a copy of nothing. And since it is no longer an empty piece of paper but now something more something imbued I don’t put it back in the paper tray and I don’t put it in the bin. I carry it carefully with my tea back to my office and put it Carefully on my desk. I close the door. Usually when I arrive and no-one is there I keep the door open for a bit. It’s my way of letting people know I’m here. It also helps me get a sense of what’s going on in the building which students are there and what they’re doing and once I’ve got a decent enough idea or if there’s someone around I don’t really feel like helping I close the door. Today it is quiet. It is a Friday. Fridays are quiet. It is the seventh of March. It is 2014. I’m looking out of the window as I recall without much interest that yesterday was my father’s sixty-first birthday. The buses tick past the window. Without really thinking I roll down the blind Until the window is as blank as my copy of nothing. I look at it but I don’t sit down yet. My computer makes a noise and a purple box tells me I have a meeting in thirty minutes. Oh shut up I tell it out loud. Now I realise that I never did print my document so I go back to the printer and the file is still there waiting for me and I press Print All and out it comes and the piece of paper looks Obnoxious scrawled over in heavy black print and ****** coloured columns and smelling Smelling of toner. For someone who claims to be conscious of the environment I print excessively. But only at work. It’s the combination of it being free (or at least, no cost to me) and that feeling you get when you swipe your access card to log in to the printer and tap the screen dit-dit-dit to choose this or that. It feels to me like being a grown-up. It’s intoxicating. I don’t want to go to the meeting and I’m suddenly annoyed by this ***** piece of paper which I ***** up and throw in the bin. **** it. Not even in the recycling. **** it. Who cares. What difference could it possibly make whether I throw this piece of paper which I will now have to print again in the black part of the bin for waste or the green part of the bin for recycling. I go back to my computer and press Print but this time I keep clicking my mouse ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit Yeah. ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit And I go back to the printer and the name of the document comes up on the built-in screen dozens and dozens of times the same name of the same document and I tap Print All. And as the machine spits out clone after clone I mutter under my breath: **** it. Yeah. Then out loud: **** it. Yeah. And as I throw them in the bin and go back for more I think I’m going to buy a car. Yeah. And I’m going to drive my car to work and when I finish work I’m going to drive it to a big supermarket a hypermarket a super hyper mega market where I will buy and buy and buy, and on my way home I will buy petrol to put in my car And I will go on holiday I will book all those last minute deals on the internet And go to Turkey or Lanzarote or Corfu for a hundred or a couple of hundred pounds, every month maybe And I’ll fly there on a big plane. I’ll soar over the ocean on a big plane. And when I come back I’ll soar over all those people outside Stansted Airport All those people With banners Moaning and complaining and protesting Banners saying things like I don’t know “Down with planes” And as the flight attendant smiles goodbye I’ll think yeah. Down with planes. And I’ll drive my car home and I will stop worrying about everything. I go back to my office. I retrieve one copy of my document from the bin and I put it on top of my copy of nothing. Whereas before the document offended me now I have difficulty telling the difference between the two. My colleague arrives and she tells me about the motorway. She’s always telling me about the motorway. I think about my car I’m going to buy and I think about being on the motorway. I think about being on that part of the M25 where the planes are so low you duck as they thunder over you and they come in rapid succession dit dit dit rapid eye movement radar. I think about being stuck in traffic there and the air thick with exhaust fumes mixing with the air around Heathrow and all those tons of jet fuel from the planes zooming over Blink and you miss them but always another follows. I go to my meeting. I realise that I have picked up my blank copy along with the document I printed for the meeting. Someone says they wish I’d printed more than one copy as it turns out it would be useful for everyone to have one and I laugh in their face without explaining myself. I make notes on it. My copy of nothing. Without really realising I’ve scribbled notes on it but as I look at my spidery black biro handwriting and think with some real despair about how I have mindlessly destroyed something pure the notes disappear into the paper and it is clean again. ii. Ringing sea My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough. What I’m looking at my rational brain tells me is a video of two people having *** I have seen that before. But what I’m actually watching is a video of my husband having *** with another woman. And my eyes don’t refresh the image fast enough So I keep seeing his face. The whole picture melts away and I just see his face Which belongs to me. It’s my face. I – own it. It’s my- my- my- And it freezes there just his face is all I can see then the video continues for a split second then freezes again His face His face His face It’s him It’s him It’s him. I stop the video and I put the phone down on the table and I breathe very deeply and every time I blink, between every saccade there is his face a face I know intimately and it’s looking away from me. I turn on the television. It is Saturday. He is flying back from Asia on Tuesday. I have until then to what? The sound and light from the television flicker over me And I sort of just empty, Quietly, like a balloon disappearing into the sky. I don’t know what I’m going to do but for now that’s fine. The brown armchair swallows me up and I cry for two hours without really noticing. The cookery programme I’m not watching finishes and I think the news is about to come on so I turn off the TV and I put on my shoes and I go down the stairs and out of the house and I get in my car. It’s raining and I just sit there. Without starting the engine I flick on the windscreen wipers: Dit / dit. Dit \ dit. Dit / dit. It takes less than three seconds for them to pass from one side of the windscreen to the other. And I get this feeling this unexplainable feeling that I want to crawl inside that moment when the wipers are moving from one side of the screen to the other. I flip down the sun shield and look at myself in the mirror. There are two lipsticks in the glove compartment. I pick the darker one and apply it carefully sensually. I start the car. West London ebbs away to the motorway My car is silver and in the rain it feels invisible I don’t know where I’m going I follow words on signposts I recognise the shape of without really reading them and I keep driving I let my eyes come away from the road and watch the fields and trees tick past like cells of film and I look at the cars on the other carriageway and I notice they’re all silver like mine (only mine is invisible) and I duck as a Boeing 777 soars over near the M4 interchange and let myself scream soundlessly under the roar of its engines. I wonder where it came from. I think about the people on board. I think about their mobile phones and all the *********** there must be on them and I realise how many videos there must be in the world of people having *** I take the M23 past Gatwick Airport the motorway ends but I keep driving until finally I come to the sea. No-one is here because it’s March and it’s raining. I have always loved the sea. Not sailing or swimming or surfing Just being near it, for me it’s a spiritual experience. I’ll lie on the stones and gaze at the sky for hours but not today. There are some flowers tied to a railing somebody has drowned. Presumably they never found a body to bury. The awfulness of that strikes me like a stone. It’s the not knowing. The lack of 100% concrete total proof. I take my phone out of my handbag. But I know now. The shingle crunches underneath my flat shoes. Now I know. The cold burns my ears and the wind picks up as I get closer to the water the tide slips serpentine up the stones white-edged beckoning me. Without realising I’ve slipped out of my shoes but the stones do not hurt my coarse feet and the wind howling now catches me behind my knees quickening my stride. The spit curls around my toes. And then I catch myself wondering whether my husband will call me or text me when he lands and I hurl my phone into the sea. On the drive home I listen to the radio. The news is dominated by the Crimean conflict and the referendum that’s coming up there. Florence Nightingale is all I can think about when they talk about Crimea. Until recently I never even knew where it was. At school you only learn about Florence Nightingale not the geography not the conflicts not Ukraine’s edges so charred by invasion and, subsequently, explosion. We live in so many war zones. and I’m wondering what else I never learned about when the story changes and now they are talking about a plane. A plane is missing between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing and the blood drains out of me. It isn’t like floating away like a balloon this time it’s like plunging off a cliff. And at once I see with brilliant, burning clarity my phone, ringing, on the sea bed The light from the screen illuminates the stormy water but I can’t see the name: I can’t see who’s calling. I need to know. I need to know it’s him. I drive back at twice the speed limit. In the dark the flowers look menacing and half-dead; my shoes fall off in the same place But the tide is in so the whole beach looks different. I’m up to my waist but my top half is as wet as my bottom half because the rain is torrential and I can still hear the phone ringing but I can’t see the light in the sea. and I howl his name but the wind carries it away soundlessly and I can’t tell if I’m further out or if the tide’s further in and the ringing grows louder as the current takes me powerfully by the waist and the stars rush by overhead. iii. Acid rain Every time I blink, between every saccade I see a brilliant but infinitesimally brief flash of colour. Purple or green I think. One on top of the other. It’s hard to tell for sure because they’re so brief. It’s like when you look at a light bulb for too long or stare directly at the sun. I see it sometimes when I’m on my bike or on a really big rollercoaster going downhill at 100 miles an hour the wind blasting through me the screams whirling through the air. But I’m not on a rollercoaster, I’m sat very still it’s Monday afternoon and I’m at school. I haven’t said a single word to a single person today. I didn’t even answer my name in the register. I feel a bit dizzy like everything is turning together but I’m on a different axis? I think the bell goes, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I leave anyway and no-one stops me. Outside in the sunshine the flashes of colour are several thousand times brighter. In the next lesson I slip in my earbuds and it looks like the teacher is singing the words. I put on the most obscene song I can find. I must have it on too loud because eventually she notices and she forces me to give her the headphones. This is the first time someone has spoken to me today it feels a bit surreal but the world stops spinning a bit. After school I go into the supermarket on Wigmore Lane the enormous white of it is tinged in green and purple and all I want is to buy a drink I have a feeling of exactly the kind of drink I want but I can’t find the right one even though the fridge must be longer than the driveway of my house. Racks of newspapers and magazines clamour for my attention the only real colour in this great white warehouse of a store red tops and blue spreads and green and purple and green and purple and green and purple… They’re talking about that missing plane in the news and they keep using the same phrase. They’re talking about the people on board the missing plane and they keep saying Missing presumed dead. Not dead dead. Presumed dead. I start wondering what it’s like to be both dead and alive at the same time, as if all the people on board that plane are like Schrödinger’s cat (cats) and we won’t know whether they’re dead or alive until we find the plane and pull it out of the sea and look inside so until then they’re both. Out in the car park I count the planes as they descend onto the runway less than a mile away. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, I figure about a hundred and eighty a plane maybe, which means fifteen hundred people just arrived in Luton. Nobody comes to Luton for the scenery. Soon they’ll be gone, A town haunted by a ghost population of thousands an hour. filtered onto the trains and buses and out from the sprawling car parks to the motorway, and onto connecting flights back into Europe but none of them will stay in Luton Missing presumed dead. As I bike through Luton I think it might not be so strange to be dead and alive at the same time. I’ve lived here my whole life and the whole place which is a ******** moves with the mundanity of machinery like the big car factories by the airport the lights on, the production lines rolling but all a bit automatic and lifeless. But in the airport, it’s different. The air, with its artificial chill, hangs with a faint shimmer and the people here move purposefully, and with charge excitedly or dejectedly but not neutrally heading for the gates where they are sealed two hundred a time into airtight tubes like Schrödinger’s cat: dead and alive in the air; one or the other on the ground. My teachers say I have an “odd way of looking at things”. I leave my bike outside without chaining it up and go into the terminal. In a café in the check-in hall I find exactly the drink I want and I pay £2.75 for it. I look at the departure boards. Edinburgh. Bonn. Marseilles. A green light flashes next to each gate as it opens green and purple green and purple Missing presumed dead The flashes of colour are growing brighter every time I move my eyes a green and purple streak follows behind like a jet stream but the bustle and activity of the airport is so much that I can’t keep my eyes still so they keep darting this way and that until my vision is painted over green and purple. The streaks roll over each other like clouds of acid rain. This is the final call for flight 370 to– My bike is gone when I go back outside The front of the terminal is a plateau of thousands upon thousands of cars and it’s probably in one of them but I’ll never know which. The car parks reach all the way back to the runway. Green and purple acid rain from all the jet fuel mixed with the air melts a hole in the fence and I slip through moving purposefully with charge across the green and purple grass scorched by a hundred thousand landings a hundred thousand people arriving in Luton And there on the tarmac glinting in the rain surrounded by blinking amber there is my bike its black handlebars spread like the wings of a jet plane. I duck as an Airbus screams in just a few feet over my head the rush from the engine lifting the soles of my feet from the ground. I pick up the bike and start pedalling pedalling down the runway pedalling towards the blinking amber. It feels light, nimble, fast the tyres take the asphalt with ease. And the faster I go the lighter I feel the acid rain eats away at my clothes and they melt off my body and pool on the runway below, Lighter and lighter until… The wheels lift away from the ground and in the air I am dead and alive and maybe nobody will ever see me again. iv. Burning sky The faster I go, the lighter I feel. I’ve taken the night watch and the yacht is cruising across the Indian Ocean penetrating the black abyss like a white bullet and the lights in the portholes send shimmering white bullet shapes for miles across the endless ink. What? We’re not going very fast at all But it feels like any minute we might drop off the edge of the world. I hope we do. I feel light and dizzy and irrational and I feel aware of being light and dizzy and irrational and I wonder if this is what going mad feels like. Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life? I feel like that a lot lately. Marc is sleeping. We didn’t speak much today. I can’t really remember how long it’s been since we left Victoria but the fight we had there in a bistro by the port we said things we said things that we can’t take back. The Seychelles were stifling. The heat was stifling. He was stifling. And the people were stifling the people kept talking about pirates. They kept warning us about pirates. You’re sailing where they say You must be careful they say It’s notorious they say I have fantasies about being kidnapped by pirates. Not stupid Johnny Depp pirates with *** and parrots, no Real pirates. Nasty pirates. With dark snarls and AK-47s. When we were at sea off the Horn I’d see things on the horizon Dots or lights I couldn’t make out And I’d imagine the rifle against my neck Their hot breath Chains and ransoms. I’d wonder how much we’d be worth. If we’d make national news. Would it be David Cameron to announce, regrettably, we don’t negotiate with pirates, or would it be someone less important? Maybe just the foreign secretary. What is the worth of my life at the end of a steel barrel? But it would only be a buoy, or a plane on the horizon, and I would get into bed with Marc disappearing under the covers like a different kind of hostage. I oh I Sorry I’m crying. I don’t know when I started crying. The thing is I don’t know if it’s me breaking the marriage or the marriage breaking me. I’m watching everything literally fall to pieces and for all I know it’s me with the detonator. And then everything literally falls to pieces My mug of coffee falls from my hand shatters on the deck and the sea rears up nightmarishly. Above me a long orange **** of flame is burned into the sky. No, really. That’s not a metaphor. There is fire in the sky. It’s about a mile up and a mile away. Look. There. **** **** **** **** What is that? Marc! I call for Marc. Marc! There is fire in the sky. – _Katherine._ Fire in the sky. Fire in the Fire in – _Katherine._ Fire – _Katherine._ What Marc, what? – _Are you awake?_ I think so. – _You were calling out again._ Calling – _Calling out. You were shouting._ What where What time is it? Where – _Dubai. We’re in Dubai. It’s 7._ _They delayed again while you were sleeping._ Dubai? – _Katy I really think you should see a doctor._ Don’t call me that. – _Pardon?_ Katy. Don’t call me that. Like – _Like what?_ Everything’s okay. – Everything’s not okay. – _There’s_ _doctors. You’re not well. You’ve been confused since,_ _well actually since before it even happened._ You think I’ve been confused. – _Not right._ _Not you._ You’re **** right. – _Forget it._ Thank you. – _Go back to sleep. **** – _Are you still seeing it?_ _The plane? On fire._ _You’re dreaming about it, aren’t you?_ Yes. – _It’s affecting you?_ I’m just unhappy, Marc. – _That’s not just it though is it?_ What’s that supposed to mean? – _Something about seeing that_ _plane has scared you._ We don’t know it was the plane. The one that – – _No. But, right place, right time._ _They said_ Maybe. – _It’s still a coincidence._ _It’s not_ What – _A sign._ _From god._ _Or_ _whatever._ _Whatever you think it means._ _Katherine._ The thing I don’t know, Marc is if I’m more scared that it was the plane or that it wasn’t. – Imagine. Vanishing. Into thin air. – _I know._ No, you don’t. Disappearing into thin air Or falling out of it. – _Falling._ You can’t imagine that. – _I can._ – _I can, Katy._ _I ******* can_ _Imagine._ _Falling._ _Disappearing._ _Into thin air._ ******* _invisible._ _I am_ _right_ ******* here,_ _Katherine._ I see you. I see you Marc. But you’re not solid. I’m not solid. See? It passes right through. Now you see me. Now yo– v. 2015 Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life? The hotel room here in Singapore is almost identical to the room I had in Mexico City. The heat feels the same and it’s the same nondescript decoration which doesn’t really belong to any time or culture. It gives me a headache. The neutrality of it. As I check my messages I remember I’m not in Singapore. I’m in Kuala Lumpur. I haven’t been home for nearly three weeks now. It’s ridiculously late The IOC conference is at six thirty and I’ve been asleep all day. I get dressed and grab my camera and leave the hotel with a large, black coffee. At the press call I see a man from Reuters I recognise. The coffee here is terrible. I talk to him about his family his daughter is four now he’s shaved off his beard since I last saw him and he’s moving, he says, near me apparently to Southend. “London Southend” he jokes with a roll of his eye and inverted commas. I say yeah that’s quite near me then move away to take a phone call. Inside the press conference there are ten people at the table the women are all wearing identical powder blue suits which strikes me as idiosyncratically Asian for no good reason. The men all wear simultaneous translation headphones but the women don’t. I wonder if this is because they speak better English than the men or if it just isn’t considered necessary to translate for them. They have given the Winter Olympics to Beijing. I wonder what is lost between the Mandarin spoken by the mayor of Beijing and the English spoken by the translator. The space between words. The space between looking left and looking right. It’s a nice atmosphere in the cool air-conditioned room. I’m struck by how nice everyone is except for the British delegates including the man from Reuters who speculates that the voting was rigged. A while later someone else calls it a “farce”. I get a photograph of the IOC President’s face as it falls and email it to my office from my seat. Outside, the Petronas towers rise above the conference centre like enormous empty silos. This is my first time in Kuala Lumpur the last city I have to visit before I go home. I get in a taxi and say the name of my hotel and the city flashes by. I look out of the window at the buildings as they pass and they don’t so much slide past or glide past the motion isn’t smooth. They sort of click past. They tick past, dit-dit-dit: Building after building dit-dit-dit-dit-dit My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough to keep up with all the buildings as they pass. The taxi stops and I pay seventeen ringgit and get out: it has gone by the time I realise this is not my hotel. I don’t know where I am but I was in the taxi long enough to know that I am some distance from the centre of the city. I look up at the name of the hotel the driver has taken me to and the English transliteration is very similar to the name of the hotel I am staying in. I go inside. There’s a nightclub in the hotel I order Glenfiddich double, cut with water. not because I like it but because there’s something about scotch that feels moneyed heavy amber liquid in heavy-bottomed glasses it helps me buy into this idea of the travelling businessman even though that’s a lie. I’m just a man who takes pictures. And I want to go home. I sit at the bar which is as long as my driveway. I swirl my glass and watch the amber legs trickle down the sides. A moving light above it hits the gloss black surface with an open white like the early morning sun on my gravel as I get into my car. A girl from here, young enough to be my daughter, is talking to me. She points out her friends and I half-wave, uneasily and she asks what I’m drinking. A news alert on my phone says a piece of plane wreckage washed up on Réunion in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar and south of the Seychelles. The girl seems nice. She says her name is Dhia it means “glowing”. She doesn’t seem to want anything, certainly not *** her friends have disappeared so I dance with her. As we dance I see something in her eyes that is at once both young and endlessly wise. She has deep brown eyes exactly the colour of earth and a small mouth which smiles brilliantly. In the half-light they open up to me like pools and I imagine swimming in them. Even though she’s only nineteen, twenty-one at most, there is something about her that’s maternal spiritual nourishing. She asks me what I’m doing in Kuala Lumpur and I tell her I don’t know. She asks me what I did today and I tell her I slept then took some photographs. You’re a photographer, she says, and I shrug then she leans into my ear and says don’t tell anyone. What I say and she says I’m a princess. And I look into her eyes and she isn’t lying. She says no-one is going to recognise her but just in case she isn’t supposed to be seen drinking. Who would I tell I say to her. She grins and finishes her beer and it’s true no-one is looking at her but she’s the most magnetic person in the room. In the taxi I say the name of my hotel extremely slowly and the driver replies in perfect English yes sir, I know where you mean. Kuala Lumpur ticks by in electric darkness. I flick through the news as we drive I see the photo I took this evening about a dozen times or more. There is something bitter about the tone in all the British press when they talk about the Olympics as if: Beijing get to do it twice? What about us? I think about a country with a quarter of the world’s population and I think about the tiny little island I’ve come from and I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt. The aircraft wing that washed up in Réunion is from a Boeing 777, they say. The same type of aircraft as the one that went down last year. The one they never found. It was going from here to Beijing. Last communication at 1.19am. And it’s at that time precisely my phone rings. It’s my boss in London she says the Chinese Olympic Committee are scheduling press conferences. It looks like I’m going to Beijing.

915

Another sting on the beach at Herne Bay – I put my head between my knees and let the **** bite roll through me, and when I look up I can't tell whether the tide is going out or coming in – you didn't do it on purpose, of course. As I walk towards the vanishing point, a white pebble with black veins catches my eye. I hold it gently, like an egg, a dragon's egg you said – admiring it and planning to slip it into my tote. But in the revolution of a moment I turn on my heel and, crushing the stone against my palm, I fill it with what you said and hurl it into the water. And then I feel better.

0

Sep 17, 2023

Sep 17, 2023 at 2:02 PM UTC

Metamorphism

Another sting on the beach at Herne Bay – I put my head between my knees and let the **** bite roll through me, and when I look up I can't tell whether the tide is going out or coming in – you didn't do it on purpose, of course. As I walk towards the vanishing point, a white pebble with black veins catches my eye. I hold it gently, like an egg, a dragon's egg you said – admiring it and planning to slip it into my tote. But in the revolution of a moment I turn on my heel and, crushing the stone against my palm, I fill it with what you said and hurl it into the water. And then I feel better.

26

You dislike the word ‘palimpsest’, citing clichés overwrought, you're right of course. Yet, how well the word fits you: histories on histories, names on names, the layers obscured but not erased. To me, as well, the word grasps at the edges of how it is to know you: looking from either below or above, tender parent or great love, and both, and neither, the word describes what is not the sum of its parts but more, or other: the layers dissolving, the image moving.

0

Sep 7, 2023

Sep 7, 2023 at 3:18 AM UTC

Palimpsest

You dislike the word ‘palimpsest’, citing clichés overwrought, you're right of course. Yet, how well the word fits you: histories on histories, names on names, the layers obscured but not erased. To me, as well, the word grasps at the edges of how it is to know you: looking from either below or above, tender parent or great love, and both, and neither, the word describes what is not the sum of its parts but more, or other: the layers dissolving, the image moving.

23

finally, the long road ends and we are wrapped in the warm silence of each other. rehearsed words slip, unsaid, into the hollow of my collarbone where the bruises bloom, a bright indigo. we admire them wordlessly, and drink wine, and wait for something to happen

0

Sep 6, 2023

Sep 6, 2023 at 7:23 AM UTC

collarbone

finally, the long road ends and we are wrapped in the warm silence of each other. rehearsed words slip, unsaid, into the hollow of my collarbone where the bruises bloom, a bright indigo. we admire them wordlessly, and drink wine, and wait for something to happen

15

on ruby jacobs walk, a small girl asked us for money for ice cream. she eyed our cones yours, lemon mine, strawberry with a child’s hunger glinting and opportunistic as she held out her palm for coins. i was not yet accustomed to the shapes and sizes, to a dime being smaller than a nickel, and in any case wanted to preserve them for souvenirs so we shook our heads and walked away. a year later, writing this poem, i learned that ruby jacobs was a local restauranteur who, as a boy, illegally sold ice creams for a nickel on the boardwalk. a nickel is the larger coin the size of a ten pence piece. i know that now. the wide atlantic rose from a sloping manicured lawn star-spangled, like everything here, the airborne flag above a wide pavilion a fanatic wedding cake topper against the blood-blue sky. i slipped out of my shoes and let the white sand burn my feet, and jaggedly fill the spaces between my toes. the atlantic held open its arms though we weren’t, as we imagined, looking east looking home but south to new jersey, across the bay. the gnarled boardwalk was a song of the twentieth century a roll-call of mass-market capitalism here in the city that didn’t invent the concept but certainly perfected it: hot dogs amusements ice creams (we’ve covered that) fridge magnets baseball caps i bought an espresso cup with a picture of the president and the caption: ‘huuuuge!’ i stopped to take a photograph of a space-age building from the fifties which turned out to be a public toilet. later from the sunbaked d train, brooklyn spread out beneath us the houses garnished with flags, then the city coughed us up on seventh avenue and night fell five hours early.

0

Jul 20, 2019

Jul 20, 2019 at 7:51 AM UTC

coney island hymn

on ruby jacobs walk, a small girl asked us for money for ice cream. she eyed our cones yours, lemon mine, strawberry with a child’s hunger glinting and opportunistic as she held out her palm for coins. i was not yet accustomed to the shapes and sizes, to a dime being smaller than a nickel, and in any case wanted to preserve them for souvenirs so we shook our heads and walked away. a year later, writing this poem, i learned that ruby jacobs was a local restauranteur who, as a boy, illegally sold ice creams for a nickel on the boardwalk. a nickel is the larger coin the size of a ten pence piece. i know that now. the wide atlantic rose from a sloping manicured lawn star-spangled, like everything here, the airborne flag above a wide pavilion a fanatic wedding cake topper against the blood-blue sky. i slipped out of my shoes and let the white sand burn my feet, and jaggedly fill the spaces between my toes. the atlantic held open its arms though we weren’t, as we imagined, looking east looking home but south to new jersey, across the bay. the gnarled boardwalk was a song of the twentieth century a roll-call of mass-market capitalism here in the city that didn’t invent the concept but certainly perfected it: hot dogs amusements ice creams (we’ve covered that) fridge magnets baseball caps i bought an espresso cup with a picture of the president and the caption: ‘huuuuge!’ i stopped to take a photograph of a space-age building from the fifties which turned out to be a public toilet. later from the sunbaked d train, brooklyn spread out beneath us the houses garnished with flags, then the city coughed us up on seventh avenue and night fell five hours early.

60

She collected lolly sticks, The ones with jokes on them: Why did the chicken cross the road?-type stuff, Which she stained brown and used as floorboards in her magnum opus. The Tudor house was the best one. It had servants’ quarters And a kitchen with little hessian potato sacks made of something or other she salvaged from somewhere or other; And the floorboards looked so real: painted lolly sticks but almost evoking the smell of varnish, layers of polish on a floor trodden by centuries in perfect miniature; Almost. This was the last of the three or four dolls’ houses she built; The devil’s work for her idle widow’s hands. She built this one while you were entering your final stalemate that doomed dance that sits so permanently on your conscience like a sack of compost full of water. (I choose this simile only because I found this in my garden yesterday, and it was ******* heavy.) On paper it was simple: You gave her your house, She gave you hers. And so her house shrunk around her and became a dolls’ house of your own making, Irrationally she saw your god-hands reaching in to manipulate and extort her. She was wrong, of course. You were making good on your promise. You would come through for her in her frailty. You did – but it was a promise you made more to yourself than her, And she let her illogical mind never analytical to begin with now razed and blinded by grief and loneliness (there was nothing to work with) poison your good deed, you were both dolls now. Eight years later she died lovelessly. She retreated into her sitting room the only part of the house that stayed the same after you moved in – the walls closed in to contain it constrict it a hospital bed and vinyl chair with commode, and the brown laminate floor just like her lolly sticks. You administered painkillers Admitted the nurses Negotiated with your estranged brother. but her paranoia rotted everything and your hands cared with compassion but not love. Gone, now, the dolls’ houses remain. An inheritance of clutter in a house you bought. You answer the phone breathlessly aggressively. You have been heaving the big one up the stairs that sack of compost that heavy conscience of yours. You will be heaving those ******* dolls’ houses around until I have to buy your house and care for you. But I am telling you now: I am putting them in a skip the moment I have the chance. They are not imbued with the joy they gave her any more than by keeping them safe from landfill you can imbue them with the love you withheld. They are painted lolly sticks and sewn hessian. They don’t contain any more of her than the bits of paper she kept passwords and bank balances dates and instructions for the Sky box There is nothing left of her to protect now. Open up the hinged false front, tip out the miniatures let the little figures be free, be landfill (isn’t that what dying is anyway?) all the tangible things she touched and loved are not avatars for her touch and her love. The past is not present through the preservation of objects. The past is not erased by the advancement of time nor can it be undone by corrective action. Now she is on the other side of the road, (why did the chicken– behave.) She has no further use for the things she left behind.

0

Jul 20, 2019

Jul 20, 2019 at 4:15 AM UTC

To get to the other side

She collected lolly sticks, The ones with jokes on them: Why did the chicken cross the road?-type stuff, Which she stained brown and used as floorboards in her magnum opus. The Tudor house was the best one. It had servants’ quarters And a kitchen with little hessian potato sacks made of something or other she salvaged from somewhere or other; And the floorboards looked so real: painted lolly sticks but almost evoking the smell of varnish, layers of polish on a floor trodden by centuries in perfect miniature; Almost. This was the last of the three or four dolls’ houses she built; The devil’s work for her idle widow’s hands. She built this one while you were entering your final stalemate that doomed dance that sits so permanently on your conscience like a sack of compost full of water. (I choose this simile only because I found this in my garden yesterday, and it was ******* heavy.) On paper it was simple: You gave her your house, She gave you hers. And so her house shrunk around her and became a dolls’ house of your own making, Irrationally she saw your god-hands reaching in to manipulate and extort her. She was wrong, of course. You were making good on your promise. You would come through for her in her frailty. You did – but it was a promise you made more to yourself than her, And she let her illogical mind never analytical to begin with now razed and blinded by grief and loneliness (there was nothing to work with) poison your good deed, you were both dolls now. Eight years later she died lovelessly. She retreated into her sitting room the only part of the house that stayed the same after you moved in – the walls closed in to contain it constrict it a hospital bed and vinyl chair with commode, and the brown laminate floor just like her lolly sticks. You administered painkillers Admitted the nurses Negotiated with your estranged brother. but her paranoia rotted everything and your hands cared with compassion but not love. Gone, now, the dolls’ houses remain. An inheritance of clutter in a house you bought. You answer the phone breathlessly aggressively. You have been heaving the big one up the stairs that sack of compost that heavy conscience of yours. You will be heaving those ******* dolls’ houses around until I have to buy your house and care for you. But I am telling you now: I am putting them in a skip the moment I have the chance. They are not imbued with the joy they gave her any more than by keeping them safe from landfill you can imbue them with the love you withheld. They are painted lolly sticks and sewn hessian. They don’t contain any more of her than the bits of paper she kept passwords and bank balances dates and instructions for the Sky box There is nothing left of her to protect now. Open up the hinged false front, tip out the miniatures let the little figures be free, be landfill (isn’t that what dying is anyway?) all the tangible things she touched and loved are not avatars for her touch and her love. The past is not present through the preservation of objects. The past is not erased by the advancement of time nor can it be undone by corrective action. Now she is on the other side of the road, (why did the chicken– behave.) She has no further use for the things she left behind.

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