Oct 2023
Part One - Before we ever met
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She was a clean thing, but didn't ever scrub herself, or soap herself, like the other girls would.
Instead she’d sometimes slide away from the house and crawl down the side of the valley into the river.
The river that would swell suddenly in the night after some storm, forcing its way violently through the forests in the valley, lifting things and sometimes, someone said, even moving a tree.
And there she'd sit, cold and calm in the river. Naked and shivering in the dark water, neck deep so she looked like a funny little round thing bobbing on the water, blinking.
She wasn’t afraid, anymore, that her past was looking for her.
That great metaphor, swooping through the night like a Hawk, but with a giant human nose, trying to smell her from some long distance away,
with claws and flight and that giant human nose,
But she knew if it ever did catch up with her, at least she would be clean.
In the coldest months the river really did drag entire trees away.
And facing downstream, always anticipating some fatal blow from behind, she felt just like another winter bruise the river had claimed.
Then in the summer months the water just hung about, slapping cheekily against the fertile banks where the budding flowers were tickled by streams.
Little trickles that raced against the blossoms for who could reach the river first.
Submerged in the water her skin was secretly a beast. And she loved to be in it.
Part Two - After we had met
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One day she's suddenly looking at me through the kitchen window waving a saw.
“Have you still got that blue silk smoking jacket?”
…
“I want to skin a rabbit and thought we could dress up and do it together, skin it together out in the disused airfield behind the train station.”
I want her to be my girlfriend, she kinda already is, but without any actual *******, so I say “yeh, yeh, that's just the kind of thing I'm into.”
..and she makes me wear this old blue silk jacket I found in the attic, but inside out, with the shiny paisley interior showing on the outside.
..and she wears a skirt over her jeans and I tie colourful sweet wrappers in her hair. Whispers and Crunchies, and a couple of Mars Bars.
And she's got a dead rabbit roadkill she found already, and we go to the airfield and saw it up.
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She was a clean thing, but didn't ever scrub herself, or soap herself, like the other girls would.
Instead she’d sometimes slide away from the house and crawl down the side of the valley into the river.
The river that would swell suddenly in the night after some storm, forcing its way violently through the forests in the valley, lifting things and sometimes, someone said, even moving a tree.
And there she'd sit, cold and calm in the river. Naked and shivering in the dark water, neck deep so she looked like a funny little round thing bobbing on the water, blinking.
She wasn’t afraid, anymore, that her past was looking for her.
That great metaphor, swooping through the night like a Hawk, but with a giant human nose, trying to smell her from some long distance away,
with claws and flight and that giant human nose,
But she knew if it ever did catch up with her, at least she would be clean.
In the coldest months the river really did drag entire trees away.
And facing downstream, always anticipating some fatal blow from behind, she felt just like another winter bruise the river had claimed.
Then in the summer months the water just hung about, slapping cheekily against the fertile banks where the budding flowers were tickled by streams.
Little trickles that raced against the blossoms for who could reach the river first.
Submerged in the water her skin was secretly a beast. And she loved to be in it.
Part Two - After we had met
--------------------------------------
One day she's suddenly looking at me through the kitchen window waving a saw.
“Have you still got that blue silk smoking jacket?”
…
“I want to skin a rabbit and thought we could dress up and do it together, skin it together out in the disused airfield behind the train station.”
I want her to be my girlfriend, she kinda already is, but without any actual *******, so I say “yeh, yeh, that's just the kind of thing I'm into.”
..and she makes me wear this old blue silk jacket I found in the attic, but inside out, with the shiny paisley interior showing on the outside.
..and she wears a skirt over her jeans and I tie colourful sweet wrappers in her hair. Whispers and Crunchies, and a couple of Mars Bars.
And she's got a dead rabbit roadkill she found already, and we go to the airfield and saw it up.
