‘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.
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.
It doesn’t matter that the sun has slipped behind my view for a while or that the amber hyacinth glass has lost its bright light. And then returns, irrepressible as though it never went away.
How could it, how could the life force that keeps me here, have disappeared? The taste of my fingernails, just for a second and the bole of my May tree is hidden by the cacophony of daffs, just look at them. They don’t care. They know how to do this, singing out wild and abandoned, accepting the wilt to come. I suppose I do the same.
I pack boxes, I run fingers over ornaments, I caress the dust and breathe it in, greet it, welcome in its stories.
Sometimes just for a second, it’s as though I understand. I feel the ecstasy and terror simultaneously, as though looking at the sun bringing gold to my amber glass, as though, in this moment I am everyone.
I want to hold them. All of them and tell each of them it will be ok. It will get better. I know it will and my daffs dance on the windowsill and my hyacinth reaches up to the light.
Everything is golden. like honey. And a hive for the honeybees.
It’s early, from my window I can tell it snowed over night. I have no curtains up now, nothing to block out the sun when it comes.
Outside there are fresh ice crystals, six cornered stars and a thick layer that coats the streets, that demands to be looked at but not right now.
Underneath it, is the névé from a four year storm. Some of it has melted and reformed but it lies there, foundational, quiet and underpinning this new whiteout.
Deeper still, the firn, compacted, dense and undeniable. I know it’s there of course, the core of my landscape. I have learned to walk on it by now, my boots are rugged, my legs are strong and when I fall, which I do, I grasp onto trees trunks and heave myself back up. I bleed and bruise but blood dries up and bruises fade.
Through the easy aperture, the room floods with light but I try not to rise from my bed, though I will. I don’t want to look out of my window, I want to pull the duvet over my head and push myself down into the mattress and hide away.
I won’t look from my window, not yet. The brightness floods in regardless, memories of carrots and coal, laughter, spiralled breath on the air. Transient and magical, like something to cherish, to hold. Then just cold. It disperses back to the atmosphere, to be inhaled, to go around again.
Under the fresh snow the névé blurs over firn. The firn, almost glacial ice now. Years bleed into each-other, crystals creating new shapes and forms. If I pause, stop. I can feel the ice emerge, hear the minutes growing into time.
Time, when this firn was fresh snow, when my bewildered eyes couldn’t look at it. When tears turned to icicles and stalactites on my face.
Now it’s solid firn, deep underneath. Sometimes I go out, sometimes I can even skate, I cut patterns with my blades, decorate the landscape, spin and swirl. I dance.
But not today.
Today the fresh snow lies heavy over it all. Every flake, every crystal demanding to be known.
I nestle down under the duvet for now. It’s treacherous out there. Drifts upon drifts, ice upon ice. Dangerous. But it is mine.
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.
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.
In my warm mug of hot lemon and honey, the specks of cinnamon and cayenne pepper float about, they collide with the chunk of ginger and bounce off to the sides. I watch them try to make sense of the swirling forces, giving themselves up to the motion and the heat.
I think about the woman I brushed past at the hospital, the hug I couldn’t give her despite her need and my mind spins to the other woman who budged up so I could sit down, who changed seats to make room for me at the funeral directors and she held on tightly to her mug, the tea they’d made for her, the heat pushing through the ceramic, trying to reach her fingertips, trying to tell her she’ll be ok.
I hold my mug now, I can feel the pressure where its smoothness meets mine. I watch myself watching it, feeling it.
We lock eyes, the woman on the end of their sofa, and both take a deep breath together. I pass her a weak smile and say ‘out breath’ out loud and we nod, we understand. I’ll never see her again.
I wonder if she’s thinking of me this morning. Or if the woman in the hospital remembers rushing past me, remembers the paleness of my face and how my eyes caught hers for a split second.
I wonder what these women are doing now and if they’re sitting quiet in the still sparkle of the lounge, if they’re holding their mug close to them, watching the moments spin.
I’d better shower, better seep into the day, note the sensations as they move through me and feel the connections I can’t see.
The heat disperses into the morning, the kick of ginger wakes me.
I made my bed yesterday. I’ll make it again today. I’ll fold the weight of white bamboo sheets across the bottom of the bed and smooth it out. I need to smooth things out. And I wonder about the woman who’s preparing for the service on Tuesday.
I’ve decided it’s a woman, though it might be a man, might be both, might be many I suppose. But for my purpose, she’s a woman and I imagine she makes her bed too, though maybe it’s a shared bed and someone else has made it today. But I won’t go there, not right now.
Is she counting days like me and will the sound of fireworks forever tie her to the day she’s yet to have? Will she, like me, years from now watch the fizz and sparkle in the sky? Will she jump a little from the bangs and will she hold the scattered colours on her retina, aching not to let them go but then they fade?
I don’t know her but I want to hold her close, want to feel her warmth, the blood charging round her veins. I want to hold her tight as she sobs it out into my arms and maybe in a week from now when it’s my turn, then maybe she’ll come round here and do the same for me?
I should make my bed. I wonder if the woman who’ll be at the service on the 5th is up? I wonder if she slept ok, or if she had nightmares again?
I’ll think of her on the 6th of course in that chasm on the other side. She’ll still makes her bed, I’m sure. Well, you have to don’t you?
I think about this woman I don’t know, someone else going through the same. Makes me feel less alone, you know?
Better make the bed. I like the feel of bamboo sheets, I like the way they calm me.
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.
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.
Janey L Foster 