January | 2016 | Janey L Foster

Frank was a sudden storm at the end of my year.

He arrived unannounced like an old friend at a party who made their way through the throng, crept up behind me and shoved their knees into the backs of mine, crumbling my stance and pushing me forward into the carnival of the buffet.

Frank was there when I woke, dancing around the garden, pulling out the saplings that we’d planted in the spring, sending leaves up in eddies that jerked and hurled before they dropped fast, to crash and I thought of the Christmas when my teeth came out.

All through the night the howling and moaning. Rain smashed the glass, pots scuttled down the drive as you leaned in. You knew my teeth had to go. It was time, you said and I understood.

I opened my mouth, a little at first, as you hooked your finger around my gums and wobbled. And then more, more fingers, a thumb in the other side and my mouth ached. The corners of the skin split just enough to catch the salt from your last packet of crisps and they swelled.

The cuts puffed out, throbbing splinters of white heat, drawing attention to the sides of my face, while you burrowed. And in deeper until I gagged, spitting bits of teeth onto your hoovered carpet.

And they crunched up, little pieces of me, little shards, my blistered enamel and I swooned.

I wanted to pass out, I wanted the fullness to stop but it didn’t and with your hand inside my mouth you flicked and eased, you twisted them out of my gums.

I can see us now, me retching, a spot of blood that you’d hurry to scrub from the pile and how you looked after your carpets. How the windowsill was gleaming and the cleaning fluids lined up, parading candy colours, dolly mixture shades when the sun came through.

But it didn’t shine that day.

Storm Frank peeled the garden, wrenched the nature from this place, as we stood, you smiling, making little towers with my teeth and me, bent double, heaving, wiping saliva off the back of my hand.

My tongue hurt, my mouth sobbed. It was winter and you were so in love with me.

1.1
Well, she thought, here we go again. Yet another year, they tell me. Everything compartmentalised, broken down into fraction and number and though I understand the truth that number is written into our place, I do question it. I question where it started, who made all the divisions? I question these days, these hours, the minutes that we watch. So they say it’s another year, I don’t worry because it’s just number doing its thing. It had a 5, now it’s a 6 and it’s all so arbitrary. I have to make sense of how I will spend it and spend it is all I can do. What skills am I employing, what messages to our son? And I can move. Remember that, I can still move and while I’m in this machine they call time, I must use it. And use it well.

I have a friend, a good friend who though I’ve never met her, I sense that I know. And I mean I know her from a different place, a different world, long ago or out of time, I can’t be sure. She resonates somehow to my wavelengths, I pulse in time to her dance and the friend turns her ignition key just about now, she has her eyes fixed on the horizon and her small dog curled up to her side. As she eases out of her gateway, bristling with choices and verve, I think of her, of the energy to change, of the irresistible law of movement. And as she forges outwards making new tracks, I remind myself to push up from the bed, to leave this warm bundle of familiar fabric and taking my cold feet to the bathroom floor I will find me there waiting, hand outstretched, urging me to spend my moments well, while we’re here, while we breathe.

This concept, this notion of time still around us and I must take our son’s hand for the dance.
It’s January they tell us, it’s the first yet again, as I write. We are here and we have choices. It’s all there waiting for us, in the turning of hands, in the beating of moments.
Wild, possible, untethered – It’s a only a matter of time.

11.1
More numbers and they keep coming. There’s little I can do but allow their process.

Mother bought me an abacas when I was young, I would sit near their old green settee and push the wooden beads back and forth, enjoying the slam and the click. I made patterns with my small fingers and I learned to count. Everyone learning to count, to add another year, another day, another moment, always looking to the next second, the time ahead, then they will have what they need, then it will all be in place and they will allow themselves to smile and be happy. And I can count backwards too, I remember the bear birthday cake. Mother spent ages on it, icing an upended Swiss roll, making small sponge arms and legs, the thick green icing swirled around its paws in scallops of butter cream sweetness.

I can do backwards. I can do then but all it seems to do is underline now.
Now, and my friend in this moment. Her little dog’s paws scuttering over new lanes, firing up dried out leaves as she runs. Something interests her, she stops, sniffs the ground, turns a circle chasing dust and then she’s off, my friend in striding steps behind her.

They tell me it’s another year, my numbers change but it’s arbitrary.
I am here. I am now. I am this moment.

I want to chase flecks of dust.