In her mind she organised the day, hid little treats around the house, his favourite things and she baked. Tiny cakes and tiny biscuits as though they lived in a magical world. She iced everything with silver letters, anagrams of their favourite words and she watched him as he ate. One letter after another, sugared syntax on his tongue and he was happy.
She loved to bake, she liked to feed him and later she set up the annual treasure hunt. Clues were presented in unusual places and the more he searched the younger he became.
And the younger he became, the more they merged. Together, hand in hand they moved back in time until he caught her eye by the school gate and she looked down. And up. She looked back up at him and smiled. They walked towards the bottom end of town, to the park by the swimming pool and round the back, under the bridge, in the shadows he pulled her into him and kissed her. It was the most obvious thing and somehow as their lips collided it shuddered through the years as though she was an older woman looking back.
They walked on, arms linked, talking nonsense, laughing. And at the turning for her road he said he’d meet her in morning, he might be a little late.
‘Wait here for me?’ he said. And she nodded, ‘I’ll be waiting,’ kissed his cheek and turned to go then stopped.
‘Oh, I made lemon drizzle today in food-tech, got loads, d’you want some?’ and she pulled the tupperware out from her bag, flicked the lid off and gave the cake to him, soft and moist, sugared in tiny stars.
She pushed it into his mouth with pen stained fingertips, it melted on his tongue and he swallowed.
‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘Yeah, pretty good,’ he smiled, and it was and she was and they were.
1. Right. Fine. I’ll just look at the sky then, I’ll just notice how the may tree berries echo the salmon shade of clouds. Soft charcoal trees on the Ridgeway where I used to walk. I know, I know – someone made it February. What can I do?
2. Pale lime and almost moss green of the parsley into soft lemon, fading now. Bright spots of chrome, diamonds on my tap, underneath uncertain cloud. Strawberry pink plastic peg on the Delft flower pot like a boiled sweet, almost translucent, promise of a saccharin hit. Not right now. Nameless old lady walks Jasper. I know the Jack Russell’s name but not hers.
3. There’s too much sky to my left, in the place where the Medical Centre used to be. How the building site disturbs me, can’t they see what they’ve done. I’m there somewhere in the rubble and cement dust, somewhere in tiny pieces, as if to ram home the point under their bulldozers. The High Viz jackets upend me.
4. If I iron, if I ease out creases and watch the smoothness spread then I’ll be able to take deeper breaths, then there’ll be control, of sorts, even if it’s only control over fabric. It’s a start.
5. Cursor flashing, marking time. Come on in, the keyboard’s lovely. You’ll be alright, I’ll take your hand, your tapping finger, the one with the Lapis Lazuli ring. You know the one, the one with the hidden depths.
6. My body starts to regulate. I feel tears drop off my cheekbones. I focus on the sound of the heating creaking through the walls. I notice the cold slate sky but it still warms me. I wipe my eyes, the boiler clicks off. Round we go again. I will be fine. My breathing settles.
7. Shhh, I’m not really here right now, so I’ll be quiet. It’s a honed skill but one of which I’ve grown tired. Workmen are tearing up the street, new fibre optics coming in, territorial parking in dissary. They saunter with wheelbarrows, owning the day, smashing up the pavement where I used to walk. Shovels scrape. I might nod to them if I go out, might not. See how I feel.
8. Boiler firing up, pipes chuntering regardless of where I sit or what I do. Underneath it all, like Miles Davis in the background, softened but there, inescapable. And through windows Yesterday’s Girl catches my eye. I’m trying not to look at her but she’s coming close.
9. The radiator tries its hardest. Still fails to get through to me. For a while all it can do is watch me go into a flat spin.
10. Hello granite, it’s been a long time. I’ll just lie here then, I’ll just be smeared out under your might and grace. Don’t mind me. Do your worst. And then. Throat punch. I swallow down, gag on my words.
11. The reliable expansion of my ribcage, my diaphragm filling with air. And in the micro pause before the outbreath all the other worlds play out around me. The possibilities of all the lives not lived and all the moments of this one cascading, overlaid, looping in a numinous form, every second a symphony again and again and again. And then I breathe out.
12. What do I do with this then? White lines on the window ledge almost as though it’s a bright day, almost like a reflection of the sun, as though spring is demanding of me. I have noticed. It’ll be Thursday soon then I’ll look. I mean it will be Friday. Friday, not Thursday. It’s Thursday I’m careening into. I stumble over words and thoughts. Fraying.
13. It rained today, of course. I fought it hard, did my best, even tried my salsa moves. But my body knows better, it takes me to the Relative’s Room, too much orange paint, I don’t like orange paint, not now. Why didn’t they paint it blue, something calming? I press my face up the window, it’s cold. Black buildings reflect back at me. Harsh, empty, soulless shapes. Rain smacks the glass. I push my forehead into the pane. I feel nothing. I try to breathe. Tomorrow’s coming.
14. Rooms. Faces. Magazines, low coffee table. Their soft sofa. More faces. Mouths move. I forgot to take the food out of the oven last night. Some things I forget. I make a fist with my small hand, neat nails digging into my palm. Little indents, tiny smiles. Fade. Repeat. The heat in my lower back, push against the radiator, bring me back to now. Branches tremble in the faint breeze. Yes, watch the branches. Faces. Mouths move. Repeat.
15. I don’t remember my shoes. I wonder what I wore, not that it matters. I remember my coat. Blue. Blue curtains. Flash frame, freeze frame. Repeat. And yet sound is distant, vague. Unsure shoes always walking corridors. Rooms. Faces. Words. Always words. Mouths telling me things. Moving mouths. Still, the berries have almost gone off the may tree outside my window and the starlings in my roof embrace the day. Berries drop, some get eaten, some rot. Some I brush out of the way. I make movements with my arms, hold the broom like an oar, heave myself through thick waters and remember I have a body. My body tries to come back to me, hesitant, fracturing. Leave my head with the berries. They roll around, relational, atomic. I notice crocus pushing through the lawn, hesitant, striving. I brush my thoughts into the road. Spring soon. Always flowers. So many flowers and scents and dancing to come. And music. And colours. My body starts to come back to me. Carry me back. Bring me back. Make me Now. Make it magnificent.
She listened hard to the sparrow chirp outside her window and if she went deep down inside its beak, she would fall on the sweet sounds and they would propel her up, back out to an earlier day.
There on the notes of a different bird and a distant window, and there she would lie waiting for the day to unfold. And younger, thicker hair would grace her pillow and the old kitchen chair beside her bed, borrowed as a clothes rail would be covered in the bright clothes she used to wear. The leggings and silk shirts, half folded and waiting and there just to the right of her un-stretched womb was the red t-shirt ready for the day.
And sparrows called out from neat gardens, tended, they flitted past the bedroom window, a moment’s shadows where she lay. The candlewick bedspread, a well worn lime green, would be scrumpled at her feet and she’d get up, pull herself to standing, slight and small.
Birds cheeped loud as she smoothed her black waitscoat and somewhere else, unseen by her, somewhere two hours away, he pulled out his best jumper from the drawer.
Birds would have sung over his head as he climbed into the Orion and as they startled up into the air, he drove the distance between them.
Until. Her hand on the brass door handle and he appeared.
And quiet churchyards and pine trees waited and park benches came and went. And in her red t-shirt, in corners of restaurants, the huge salad bowls bought the evening. Till birds slept in trees, huddled and her mind buzzed with the hours, with his words.
The sparrow chirped outside her window and she came up and out, on its song, hung in the air, like its carefree notes and remembered when they were young.
The seagulls are back today, they swoop around, they circle her old home and from their wings she sees the carpet in the lounge, how it turned from spiralled blues to pink. And she sweeps above the kitchen, where the corner chair became a cupboard for the pills, opposite the kettle where she first made him a drink.
And as she looks, the seagulls fill the rooms, their wings waft feathers in her face and carry her upstairs and there they beat the air, there they hover at the edge of her old bed, with its camblewick green cover and in the light that lifts from day to night and day to night again, she sees herself lying, turning, holding thoughts.
The cupboard to the right is silent, where the drawer is stiff, the rich deep wood and a lamp stand of fading brass. She can smell the scented carpet and the polished trinkets, there, on a painted window sill that overlooks that world and as her seagulls settle and fold their wings she smells the coast.
Bedruthan rocks wrap around her and as the sand sneaks in her trainers she pads the beach towards him, laughing, parka flapping in the cut of air, then back.
Seagulls resting on her bedspread, her bed by a bookcase from her youth, crammed with early interests and they whisper. The ivy green curtains are closed, the lamp is off. Her seagulls watch over them, their words and murmurs.
And it’s August. They ruffle feathers around her and lift her up, away from her black and white skirt on the chair, its bells silent and the birds sing out, it’s always August, they call out, we’re always there.
I sit in your mouth and it’s warm, it’s a round pink place which enfolds me. And how the rub of your tongue soothes my back, how I hold onto your teeth to give me structure. The food comes in, it careens around me, over and into my spaces, the familiar battering and I despise every morsel but i know their names. I sit in the corner of your mouth, I live in this dark moist world and then you mash your teeth together and I feel them crush and smear my form, stretched out fibres of myself, wavering and flipping in the cave where I live, where no one can see me, where my voice fades to dust on spittle, my streaks are a lick of taste inside your mouth.
And you swallow
and I glide down and down, tumbling into your chasm until I climb and climb. I dig in with where my nails used to be, I hold myself up in the flush. I recall myself, I wriggle on the place where my belly used to be, up and up and through to your throat, slipping, craving a ledge until I rest. I sit on your tongue, it is warm, the bristles massage where my limbs used to be.
I am still. I curl up in the corner of your mouth and when you yawn, I can see the world I used to live in, outside, over there, sparkling and remote.
I live in the crevices in your mouth, it’s dark and tight and damp. This is my place now.
Janey L Foster 
