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. 

Breathe – November

Beetle in a box

Box on an island

Island in the ocean

Ocean at my core

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.

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. 

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.

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.)

Blanket (Underland #2)

Still in her chair approaching year end and she wanted to be his blanket. Hours peeled across the day, time was moving though she wasn’t.

She appeared to have put herself on pause. It was a limbo where she breathed in and out. She remembered the shape of this place from many years ago, from a time when all she could do was process thoughts. And she thought about his blanket.

Maybe that was all she could do for now. If there ever was a time when she knew she was more then flesh and blood, when she knew she was a soul in human form, then it was now.

Now, when she felt the restriction of her edges, when everything inside her yearned to reach him. Now, when she sat up late in the corner of her lounge that they knew well and she wondered if he was on his sofa trying to reach her? Were they somehow together now, in this second at 22:40 as she typed?

She still had a body, but it was only an encasement, while everything else, the very essence of her, left her form and wrapped itself around him.

It was 22:44 and she was his blanket.

Beautiful Bright Red Balloon (Underland #1)

And then she knew just what to do, she would come here. Here, to reach him, here, in the place that only they knew. She breathed out and slowed down and wished for him to do the same.

The balloon was exquisite. It beamed out light even on the darkest days and she would pull down the red ribbon by which it was tethered and bring it close up to her face. She looked inside.

And all of their moments swirled and danced inside like the rainbow colours on a soap bubble and it calmed her. She held it close like a new-born in her arms, like a precious thing to be cherished, to take care of, to be loved. And it was. And it is. And it will be.

Here, in her chair near the end of the year and if she listened she could feel him reading her words, hoping that she’d reached him. The balloon bobbed, followed her wherever she went, never left her side, as she would never leave his.

She’d come here, that’s what she’d do, for as long as it takes. And in the quiet she watched the balloon softly moving, tender, patient, compassionate.

A prayer between them.

Always.