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The woman at the bus stop finds that she is missing parts of herself. Half a ribcage, most of her left leg, her lower right arm. She knows they can’t be gone, absent, or she’d fold into the space where her leg would be, but she can’t see what should be there.
She can see the pavement behind her by looking down, wonder at the empty sleeve tracking her hand’s movement. She can’t understand why people don’t stare but they don’t seem to see her empty spaces, missing places. She sees nothing in their faces but blank looks, vague half-smiles, the usual working morning masks.
She gets through the long day, tries not to think about visibility, comforts herself with tales of how strange hormones can be. She smiles at bosses, colleagues, clients. She toils through grocery shopping and the long ride home, avoids reflections, nods at strangers.
At home she undresses with her eyes closed, stands before the mirror, breathes. She opens her eyes. Wider. All she sees is her mouth, trying not to scream, and her hands, fluttering: moths at a lit window, songbirds in a hunter’s net.
We have come beyond the places where painted signs tell walkers where to look, what to see. Up here, on the ridge, the trails across the tussocked land are too narrow for boots and straight as the fox’s bloody thought.
Grey geese chevron the sky and a kestrel hangs, kites on the wind, waits for a neon scurry to spark in her eye; our movements too large for her notice. Wind bends the grass, shivers it from green to silver.
We have go on, go further: the paths down are behind us. They are steep and hidden.
The Sea Hare slips from water-forms, scribes patterns in sand with ivory shells
and seagull bones to light paths unseen. She rides the storms on ribbons of kelp,
stalks waves when they covet slivers of painted wood or steel mirrors for vanity.
She spins, with sea hare skill, tunnels that twist and shimmer in blue, green, black; sequins
them with plankton glow to guide lost sailors home to her green-lit halls.
The slow old river soothes to her whispered challenge; he falls into her web of tricks,
losing each game to give up small swimmers he would hoard in rooms of woven weed.
So he was clothed in the dress of the dead child, they being of equal stature; and when the King’s fore-rider appeared the poor overwrought governess was able to breathe freely. - Bram Stoker ‘Famous Imposters’
I When my women have left me for the night, when I am free of the wig and the starched linen then sometimes, I think of Bisley.
That red-headed lad who scraped his knees climbing on the mellow gold of the Cotswold walls seems so far from here. I must wonder
whether it is imagination or memory draws for me the scent of hay, the cool shade of the old willow and the long day’s heat
from the grey welsh pony as he trotted over Chalford Hill and tossed his head against the flies and a child’s too-eager urging.
II It seemed a small enough thing to ask of a boy, to save My Lord a father’s grief. A play-acting, a harmless masque, and a reward to come or so they said.
A chance to primp and giggle in a princess’ frocks, to dimple and curtsey as if a travelling actor, must amuse a lively lad; old enough to thrill at a little deceit, too young to conceive of an end.
III I don’t remember when I came to know how the power I hold is feared, nor how it was given, unwitting, by those in fear of power. I do recall the moment I knew that, within these skirts, behind a jewelled corset, this life is mine to define: no man can deny me this orb.
I can order the lives around me, or decide their end. I can declare that I have the heart and stomach of a man, I can demand the hunters bring the stag for me to grant its quietude; these things become meet and right because I do them.
What I can’t do is know what difference choice may have made; or if, indeed, there was choice to be had. I can’t know what life that tousle-headed boy would have led: what scrapes and troubles, what maidens brought to bed, what joys and sorrows, what regrets.
Published in Obsessed with Pipework, 40, ISSN 1367 9147 |
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