(TW - ****** coercion)
Last night a warning slid clear of gentle grey clouds.
This morning the verdict is torrential. Rain sheets and wraps roads - drain-to-drain, kerb-to-kerb.
You’re driving out in that.
I love you.
The layering of years. Kind deeds. Coffee left by the bedside, tea left by the tub. The look in your eyes when the blue screen went up, shielding me from the birth of our first child. Returning with you to our tiny flat. Staring, enthralled by our boy.
(your hands found me too soon, too sore. i wanted to but couldn’t - 'no' was rubbed raw to 'yes' - i didn’t want to but did. i came and it hurt and we kissed)
Loving texts and treats - my first day back. Your smile, telling me I looked well hot in a suit. Christmas with our families, all together. Ridiculous, huge Snoopy pyjamas, not the La Senza lingerie I wanted. You, too shy to ask about sizing.
(i was tired and bled painfully. you were restless, hard. i needed to sleep. i eventually agreed - said you could come over my belly and thighs. i cried in our bathroom)
Languid summer days in France with your parents and our boy. Their first grandchild. Cuddles at sunset. Raid plug-ins instead of pretty pink lamps. Cheap wine, green olives. Tomatoes ripe from the vine. Bread torn, dogs begging for crumbs under the table.
(the house was busy. you fingered me when i was hanging out laundry. our bed creaked and i wanted you as a secret, so we made love in a soft duvet nest on our floor)
I love you.
Your fear when labour progressed crazy-fast; your confusion when I asked for a Burger King meal on our way to the hospital. Palpable relief when there was no blue screen, no transfusion. Holding hands. Grinning at our boy’s beautiful reaction to meeting his sister.
(i s-cked you, spiralled. you cupped my head in your hands. i freed myself twice. explained again. you didn’t listen. my mouth filled and fulfilled its purpose. i’d gone)
I have a clay jug, indigo with mermaids swimming around its swell. When I was small, I wanted to be a mermaid. I practised holding my breath. I wanted a salt-ocean woven about me, wanted to fly through jade tides, wash-up on white sands. Learn to walk over-again some place new. I imagined being able to move and twirl and swim vast distances without needing air. I imagined raking my fingers along all the world’s seabeds, touching rough volcanic rock and glossy-smooth ice (hands are full of magic. when s-x is a possibility, when hands flicker and play and they know why i’m watching, sound stops working. sometimes everything is silent, other-times everything is trapped in a bubble and i exist, wholly and achingly, outside of it. i feel like a mermaid then. hands are full of power. when they move in ways that scare me, i turn off. a lamp in a bright room, you’d hardly notice). The jug broke clean just above its swell and below its spout, all the way around. For a year it was in two pieces. You glued it for me. It’s okay now, but I don't pour water above the break. In February I fill it with sunny yellow daffodils.
I love you.
All the blood - there’d never been so much. You, curled on our bed talking to the operator. Me, pulling the dog to the kitchen. Rounding up prescriptions, clothes, previous ECGs. Praying to see waves of blue-light flood our walls.
Maybe they can stop whatever makes you bleed. Fix your heart enough so that another team can tinker with your spine. Your aunt had the same surgery. It stopped the crushing of nerves in her neck. She can’t use her legs now and it damaged her vocal chords.
Last night a warning slid clear of gentle grey clouds.
This morning the verdict is torrential. Rain sheets and wraps roads - drain-to-drain, kerb-to-kerb.
You’re driving out in that.
I love you.