Tucked Away

The radiator warmed the back of her thighs as the winter afternoon crept towards night. She waited for the tightness to ease out, for her muscles to relax. It had been such a bright day but she needed rain.

She wanted that cold, end-of-year rain to bounce off the supermarket car park tarmac, for the lights to fracture and sparkle like they did, for car tail-lights to be the only colour as she walked, as she headed to the pharmacy.

Her red fleece top kept out the cold but not the rain and of course she didn’t care. Rushing around the aisles afterwards, her right pocket stuffed, she patted it to keep it safe. She rustled, she became oblivious to rain, such that it became her well loved trademark.

And later, a little later, back home, she was the one who fractured and sparkled. She sat on the sofa and in the soft glow of the TV babble she felt like she lit up the room. 

She left the heat of the radiator and peeped outside to the blackness. Make it rain, she whispered to her window, to her street. Make it rain. Please.

Slow

The water seems kinder today or maybe I’m just more aware of it that’s all. I wash my arms with consciousness as though cleansing myself from within. It helps.

I wonder about the woman in the black dress . It looked black though its print was of tiny bright flowers, red maybe orange. She passed me on day one, eyes pooling, brimming, hand to nose and mouth as she rushed out. I couldn’t hug her but the feeling pulsed up through me. It would have startled her anyway if I’d reached out, she had enough to deal with. She spilled over as I just about kept it in.

That was last week.

I wonder about her this morning. Is she having a shower, does she have time for a bath, is she thinking in the water like I am? Is she held in its amniotic fluid, giving her strength for another day.

Maybe she has a quick wash, doesn’t bother with make-up, or maybe she needs it as a shield against the world. 

Does she feel the tightness in her chest, her tummy flip as she sanitises her hands and pushes through the heavy doors? Has she forgotten she’s even got a body, is she churning in her head, like me. 

The water is kinder today, present, healing, it tells me to slow down as it drips off my skin. Little spheres of surface tension, swirling rainbows dance inside. I send them out to the woman in the black dress, I hope she’s still  holding up, like me.

I must try to remember I have a body.

I breathe out.

It’s day eleven, (maybe twelve.)