Tag Archives: belong

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Maverick

The sound of Tom Cruise in my living room when I called down from the top of the stairs. He flew planes while I held my tummy. (13)

Helen, the military nurse, compared notes with me on back injuries. I watched ceilings unable to move. 36 hours awake and the third ceiling came into view. (14)

The nurse with short hair or maybe a pony tail brought the rubber mask. While she explored, my laugh fractured around the room, spiralling over my head. 

How funny that today I spoke with someone about roller skating as a child, fearless freedom of movement unlike this moment when I couldn’t even walk. (15)

The clock up on the left, the little window to the right, the beige walls. The toilet door at the end of the bed about 5 miles away. And the toilet itself, so low down, too low down, as though it existed on a plane outside my reality, designed for some other species who could bend, who could bear weight, who could stand unsupported. I leaned up the wall near the bathroom window. The frosted glass obscured everything, just like the pain. (16)

I often wonder about Delize, her head round the door at 2am, her arm around my body, her hand holding mine. 

Today’s slab of cloud fits the heaviness of then. Spaced out, waiting, needing. One day I’ll sleep again. Surgeons don’t work on Sundays, they told me. (17)

{Poured tea over myself at 9pm. Diazapam took me out, eased me into tomorrow.}

Five hours of drugged up sleep and feeling heroic,  they wheeled me into a brand new room. It seemed bigger than it was. Johnny V messed about, washed his hands by the sink. New faces, new machines, a different clock to stare at.

It would be a long day, they advised me. They didn’t lie.

The woman with no face got me onto my side  and after the ice cube test I faded back into the room and watched the patterns of pain, without the feelings. 

Hours bled around nameless hands till teatime.

A radio to my right.

6pm became 8pm, 8pm became 8:20. At 8:30 with the theatre calling, the kind one apologised to me to the sound of my tears.

A grey ceiling rolled in, or was it white, green fabric everywhere, steel and tinkering. Curtained off from myself while they burrowed, until they showed me, until they lifted him up and out in pink and red perfection.  Lilies bloomed where my abdomen used to be. 

The gash of joy, the bloodied relief of our out-breath. The scent of him, the taste of his skin. (18)

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Monochromes

She faced herself in the mirror and asked.

‘Will you let me wear this black and white skirt, will you let me feel its coolness round my ankles?’

And she smiled. She asked again.

‘Will you let me wear my white cotton blouse, the one with Pre-Raphaelite sleeves and if you let me wear it, will you let me walk by the canal?’

‘Will you let me use my small feet to make imprints in warm grass?’

And she smiled into the mirror. She supposed she came here to say yes.  

And yes, she would let me wear the black waistcoat too and she nodded into the mirror.

Yes, I will let you wear those clothes and navigate by the waters.

The mirror held her and as she walked from room to room, she peeled, ages came and went. She felt giddy in the potential before the wave function collapsed and a path was taken.

She liked the Will You game. It appealed to her mischievousness.

by

Mrs. Kelly – Room 253

Her thoughts moved to hands. She saw them cutting stems and tying, and tying turned into fingertips around the silk of cravats and fiddling with tie pins and buttons.

But she couldn’t stay there long, lying, looking at her nails, gloss mirroring the sky. She observed her nails, now ruby, resonating with the velvet from her day.

And more hands came, tousled up and pinned her hair while at her feet, fingers fiddled with long laces and ivory silk caught the morning sun.

Hands on a steering wheel, taking the corner she knows well, while another hand took hers and later helped her from the car. Taffeta cascaded, pooling over the old stone path, flooding around the smallness of her feet. 

Footsteps clicked in unison till the hands eased hers to others, to the ones waiting in the hush with dust particles held in light.  

And later her hands gripped the bouquet and thrust it up into the sky, small hands, fingers glinting like they always would and she held it up, triumphant, high.

Hands tweaking dials on a box of light, freezing moments by the trees, marking time and pressing pause. 

{Time Passes.}

And her thoughts stayed with hands, moving hands that held hers for a while, through the years and hours and today, hands around the clock.

Hands ticking time in trigonometric waves around a circle. And the once-upon-a-time hands, new hands now that ease the way.

Her nails shimmering, then and now, her fingers still small like they were. She made a fist, tiny, strong and punched the air. Her hands knew just what to do. 

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Womb Shaped

If you study the shellac on your nails and lose yourself in its luminous magical lights, in the rainbow shot silver sparkle, it will take you back. 

Take you back to just before, in the hours, in the safety, in the warmth before the sense of separation came.

And there in the shimmerings is your father, walking home in the dark, your mother in the care of the midwives and the waiting. And he slept but she didn’t and later, hours later when the phone rang in the early light, the timeless spaces on your nails flash you to his side, to him sat on the edge of the bed with your grandparents who’d come to help. 

And his words spilled out in the chill January morning, we’ve got a little girl and they cried.

They hugged and they cried and your father fought his legs into his trousers and blurred across pavements to your mother’s side. She slept and you slept although you didn’t know it.

And the sparkles on your fingertips now are the snowflaked halos around the street lamps then and the warmth of the first cup of tea when your mother woke up. And your father said she was a king to how she was before, rested yet weak, strong in the release of primal blood. 

And the lights shine off your nails like sparks of magic bringing hope, like your eyes opening in the dark, your tiny newborn body still curled and warm, womb shaped.

Your father looked at the rows of incubators, directed towards yours. They all look the same, his tired voice drifting up, his breath on glass in the dim light. But yours was the face he came to know, yours was the life that filled up theirs.

Decades ago, and the shellac on your nails now seems to dance and sing, liberated, joyful like their arms, arms that held you tight, fluttering and glistening, arms that set you free. 

The brightness of your snowflakes, the moonlight in your eyes. And if you look into the shellac of your nails now you see and feel the wintering, the gratitude of the place and time where you came in.

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Gifts

All I really need is the approaching night turning to undried ink in my rain. I need the splinters of headlights, tail lights dancing in the puddles and nestling down in red fleece I’ll rush. I won’t be long. 

And I’m not. 

And next door to the pharmacy I blur around under fluorescence for a while, conscious of my pocket once again. It rubs up against my thigh, reminding me and later all I really need are the wooden stairs, the rustling and even later still, all I really need is to sit quiet and sparkle.

And I did and I do and I will.

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Time Dilation #5

I suppose it was me and the clock, me and the concerned faces, me breathing and counting and getting nowhere. I suppose I don’t like being told that I can’t do something, so I try even harder for a while. A sense that to give up would be to fail.

Now I can feel it’s me talking from exhaustion (much like this morning, in this world now.) A sense of the pressure I put on myself, but then as now, sooner or later, I gave in, gave myself up to it all. 

I remember the nurse or maybe he was a consultant? (It wasn’t Johnny V, we never saw him again, with his slicked back black hair and pristine striped shirt) but someone apologised to me and my determination broke free from my eyes, rolled in spheres down my hot flushed cheeks. 

I guess the rest of the evening was spent in the theatre, but no aisle seat for me that time. I was centre stage, I was the whole ensemble, I was the diva under their lights and clamps and curtains. My abdomen sang wide, glorious and while they hurried, tinkered and sewed the gash, I loved him in my bloodied arms. 

Home.

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Time Dilation #4

I seem stuck, a little laden down, a little numb. And while today’s radiator warms my back to the sound of clocks and snoring, my younger hands lose their grip and tea comes tumbling, scalding, soaking into their hospital robe and I crumple.

Soon, cursor flashing, clock ticking. Tomorrow, younger, stronger.

Still stuck.

Worried the words will find me in a heap on their sterile floor but I keep going, like then, like now. Keep going and I slept half on diazepam, half on exhaustion like a dribbling drunk in their faux leather chair.

With prayer around me. 

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Time Dilation #3

This familiarity in sitting, waiting, a sense that I can’t give up. And if it were a Saturday I’d have cried at the woman between my legs, at her optimism for the day but not later. Later, no change and I sank back into the endless bed. Her trundled trolley of glinting things tidied away hope and wheeled it out the door.

Only the armchair held me, knew me, when I called out for help. I do wonder how her life worked out, the woman with the strange name who took my weight over the toilet. I still think about her, even now and the meds they locked away from me till morning.

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Time Dilation #2

Wait for it to focus, wait and then there she is, the woman between my legs. I see her face, her reassuring smile.

My voice fractures into a thousand shards, little spinning me, little jagged me. Here a glimpse, there a glimpse, fingers inching closer.

I keep an eye on the table to the right, watch the line where the wall meets the ceiling. I don’t trust them, don’t trust lines but then again, I don’t care. Not now.

My laughter shatters the room. I trust her. 

I fade in and out.

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Time Dilation #1

Morning started in the thin pink ethnic t-shirt that took me under the tree I’ll pass by later. I’m sure the bole of it remembers me, it showed me how to bend into the nature. I said I’d do whatever it takes and I did.

Now I come to think of it, it was the pale green embroidered t-shirt, did I change in the morning, now I’m not sure? Either way trees came and went. They wheeled me inside.

Later. Round about now a new ceiling watched me sleep despite the spasms.

Pillows subsumed me.