And the feeling of meconium, pushing through, the filling of my fragile wings until they’re strong.
Until they carry me up and out and over and away, watching the flowers beneath me, the breeze, lifting me. Sunlight turning up my colours till they sing.
And on the leaves below, the photons warm through the residue of who I used to be.
And if you look up, you can see me, can hear the soft beating of my wings.
See me, hear me.
There is no shame.
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)
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.
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.
Sometimes it’s the smell of lilies and the look of them boxed on her kitchen floor. Sometimes it’s the fluster of silk on her wooden stairs, how people busy themselves around her as she sits.
Now and again it’s the smell of nail varnish, sharp and clean, almost fruity, cutting through her day. Quite often it’s the thought of her mug of tea to her right, going cold as women fuss. One kneels down and laces her boots while the other stands behind her and sticks clips into her hair.
She notes how the moments jump haphazard, back and forth. The barefoot giggling, the squealing down the phone line, the faces waiting as she rustles down the stairs and then the door.
Sometimes it’s the front door open wide, the look of April grass, sap-full of promise in the sunlight but always it’s the crisp smell of taffeta, the feel of it, the weight of it, the look of it around her form. And then the leaving.
Most times it’s the leaving and her ivory heels on the mat in the foot-well of the car. And everyone who wakes up on that morning, who passes them as they drive by, will notice her, will smile and wave and she will know that decades later, that she’ll recall their faces even though they’ll have forgotten her.
And then the stone path comes into view, her clipping and shuffling into the heavy hush, dust particles hanging in the air like prayers. And most times, in fact all of the time, it’s the haze of photons, marking seconds, as if to say they’re waiting, just like he was. Waiting as she smiles towards him, knowing. And she moves through in slow-mo silence to his side.
Again and again and again. With her shield of flowers.
Sometimes later, it’s the metal sound of the hotel fire escape, as they sneak their way back in, when the guests have waved them off, when the guests think they have gone. High heels and alcohol, such a potent combination but they still make it to their room.
And then the cathedral looms up out of sequence, permanent against drunk daffodils. She tilts, she swirls against the ancient backdrop, arms outstretched with wings of chiffon, secure against the stone, pearlescent in the rays.
In the evening yards of taffeta bunch up to make a bustle and she inhabits it as though it’s intrinsic to her form. Music frays, lights and faces twirl, handshakes, hugs and tiredness falls.
And it flips back to the waiting and then the moving out towards. Always. Moving forwards, always holding flowers, a beacon to light the way.
The waiting there, this waiting here with purpose, with belief and certainty. And this is how it was, how it is.
How it will be.
Right now I feel I am hiding from the blossom as it holds onto the branch but I know it’s out there, I feel it waving, bobbing, whispering to me from outside my window. It won’t be long before I look it in the face and I can hear it calling out to me, look up, look up, look up again and I know I will.
My trees know just what to do just like my clouds and I am gentle white and pink and sometime rippling rose. I hear them just beyond the glass, framing the trees, throwing their colours to sky and I breathe out. I breathe out as if for the first time, I breathe out like the morning when I woke and squealed and rushed and laughed.
And women fussed around me, hair was curled in ringlets and my feet secured in ivory silk. They would hold me up and they did, as they do now and I breathed out. And I was bound up in taffeta as I always would be, strapped in and laced with ribbons at the back. And at the front, encasing my heart, I was held in rich wine velvet, the deepest red because I could never wear anything else, soft and strong, the unconditional love around my tiny form.
And it’s ok I tell myself, and it is. I can smell the fabric, hear its rustle, taste the rose pink lipstick on my mouth and I am there.
Ready to be wrapped in blossom, petals on me, decorating my features, tickling my neck like confetti dropping down. And I shuffled, I clicked heels down our pathway and nestled my boots in the footwell of the car and later, not much later, they moved over ancient stone, disturbing the dust of centuries, the remnants of other women who had walked and stopped and spoke and loved.
And in the echo of those before me I stood, silken and shimmering like something waiting to emerge and I did. I raised my bouquet to the sky and petals fell around us, photons warmed us, like they do and sunlight lit red velvet, lit my face and the scent of blossom filled us up, as if to saturate the day in certainty and it did and it does.
I’ve been hiding from the blossom for a while now but today I peered back outside my window, took the deepest breath to drink it in. It’s all ok, it whispered to me and I heard it. It reached me, saved me yet again. The wisdom fluttering down through years, curled and chaotic just like me, but it will settle, rest itself soon and nourish the soil beneath my trees. I’m drenched in petals and confetti yet again. Thank God my flowers know just what to do.
Cushion pushing tight into the twists,
the rumbles. Shh, time to sleep
I said before ears came.
The night, perched on the bed edge,
minutes like breaths, squeezing me.
My foreign body. Pulsing.
Weight of silence, an endless open mouth.
Yawning, howling.
Wait in darkness.
Shoe-horned into the car
under my tree, its soft reassurance,
resolve. Battered power
of an injured tiger.
Here, take my body,
it’s yours now.
Pummel me with
your ice cold faceless faces.
Watch me like a cat pawing bird
as I jolt, ricochets up my spine.
I don’t recognise myself
as they trolley me to the new room
with endless breasts which smother me.
Suffocate me in starched white.
I lay still in-between judders
with their walls and wires, lights that beep.
Daylight, hopeful smile on a wheeled-in tray.
Entonox is my friend, it brings me echoes,
fractured words and giggles
as her fingers inch.
Searching for news
but there is none.
Try again tomorrow, they say.
And I search the ceiling for a way out.
I’ve grown used to their window
though I cannot see outside.
One day there’ll be flowers on that table.
Another face on the end of the nth syringe.
I laugh and cry at the same time.
My turquoise bag reminds me of home,
it jars me.
She’ll be back later
and she drops a smile by the door.
Later the ceiling mocks me,
while they swab me clean
and tidy me away to nothing.
I may watch these walls
for the rest of my life.
You know night, that space
where everything sinks?
It takes me, leaves me shaking
in their hard backed chair,
drunk on spasms, they roll me over
strip me bare.
There, they lock the medicine away.
Tight lipped, they make me wait
till morning.
In daylight, pethidine is my best friend.
I call for surgeons,
but their absent hands upset me.
They sip tea on Sundays
while I rock, ridiculous,
a wretched remnant desperate for a gown.
Somewhere a woman wails,
disembodied hollering.
I wonder if she has flowers in her room.
I have no limbs now,
no head to call my own.
My pupa waits, watches the clock
push the hours, breath by breath,
my shadow up their wall.
Till everything bustles, they rush and prod,
watch over me in their Petri dish.
They tut-tut and poke.
Their needles search and pierce,
severing my pain.
I am numbness on plastic sheets,
chrome glints at my feet,
lights wink at me.
They concentrate and congregate,
explore me until teatime.
I give it my best shot.
Then I concede, consent to them,
give up, give out and give in.
I am aware of my breath,
my lungs expanding and contracting
by their green scrubs.
Their scorching lights and tinkering.
Brush the hair out of my eyes.
And where my abdomen used to be
the world opens, lilies start to bloom.
Loud and excitable, like a new heart beat.
Ceilings come and go under the sheer love.
Janey L Foster 