The Disgraceful Widow

For Prediction Fiction here

This weeks words: wake, envelop, hem

They were envious or scared of her, these neighbours/friends/crows, none of them actually liked her. At Jordan’s wake they were muttering, about her appearance and how well things had turned out for her “if you know what I mean”
So what if her hem was mud-sodden, her make up slipping? She had loved Jordan, loved his kindness and knowledge and his faith in her ability to do better, to be better.
Jealous witches, the lot of them.
She’d put her brave face on and show them.
Right after sinking into the enveloping warmth of this whisky.

drowned forest

These trees have spent a long time in the water, I know how that feels, but the sun presses on them. Do they dream of budding once more? Reaching down to their murky toes for a spark of life, trying to draw it up inside them, though the capillaries are long since hardened? Oh, hope is not such a straight path.

Frühling

Today, spring has appeared with it's usual "well I was here days ago you must have blinked and missed me" vibe.  Full blown blossoms in the street in town, next to Beata Uhse, fittingly already indecently pink.  

There were lambs in the scrubby field next to where I  work, already beyond the cute leggy stage, and the hairy drifts of the silver birch branches swayed with the breeze and the sun shone where today rain was predicted.  

This year, both slower and faster than ever, as the spring begins a third of the year is past, and only a handful of weeks until a large looming birthday for me, and this year I am acutely aware of aging. 

He said, intending to be nice, commenting on an internet picture I'd sent, that my tits weren't as saggy as that, and I thought maybe not the last time you saw them, but it has been a while. I was excited, instead, by kitchen equipment, a new pair of scales and the promise of home baking where I have never wanted to play the home maker with him. 

Age is creeping up on me, even my eyelids droop and fold, I am so practised at veiling my gaze.

underneath...

there is nothing left
I visited our home land,
you would not see me

I wish I didn't know what you were going through...

sore sore eyes and sick
sore heart. he made me love him,
it was mutual.

nothing helps heartache,
left as nothing, self slides down
he tramples shared dreams.

friends hold out their hands
but I can't touch human warmth,
it's too much contrast.

beaten and left for dead

No coffin for this
love killed by your thoughtlessness;
naked mouldering.

When was that?

I lost that girl somewhere.  She was careless and carefree and reckless and, no, wait, reckfree is not a word; but if it was, she would have been all of that too.  In retrospect yes of course I admired her, loved her even, if only she'd known that.  The turn of her neck, whisking her hair past me, across her eyes, so that I saw her face only in flickers as she smiled, on her way through to somewhere else.  Fleeting, fun and gone.
Stolid and set now, I have taken Scarlett O'Hara's "I'll think about it tomorrow" and hardened into a life of procrastination.

haiku n° 5

Your seed trickles out
a wet patch; summer is due,
sunshine flew away.

haiku n° 4

You pull out of me,
drive from the hotel; litter swirls
windblown vortices.

haiku n° 2

Yes, it is calmer
without you close, rain clouds scud
across the grey sky.

Nil by mouth...

It is as if my lips have been sewn together, each time I want to communicate with you I am pulling on the stitches, the muscles around my mouth twitch now in anticipation of the tearing pain; if I carry on I will have short stubby whiskers as the knots come loose.
I can't ask even "how are you?" because my words are so potent, we are so poised over the precipice that to even make polite conversation will start us off on that luge-track again. 
I would prefer my words to be a gently bubbling warm jacuzzi, something you would feel both exciting and comfortable; but it seems I am instead a black run, exhilarating but fraught with the danger of crashing out, and in any case there is a sharply defined end. 
I would like to be a spicy Merlot, full bodied and tangy, to be anticipated and savoured each time the bottle is broached, there is a ceremony to it's opening.
But it seems I must be a cheap blended whisky, my taste is harsh but acquired, as the patina of adulthood is acquired and sometimes I was just what you needed to get pissed, to blot out any sorrows and be gladly uplifted by the glamorous falseness of "having fun" and I wonder how you are drowning your sorrows now?
And perhaps it is better that my mouth is forcibly closed, who knows what I would pour into it, and then what would pour out?

The days pass

Today he is unfettered and alone; he sits naked in the cool sheets in his Eastern European hotel room and messages her to pass the time.
Tomorrow she will be alone at home and feeling desperate; swallowing down the urge to contact him and spill her sorrow; she is sure he will not help so she will drink and shut the world out, cork the feelings in.
Today though she messages him back; he tells her about how swollen his cock is and how he thinks of her lips on it, no not those lips, the others.
The day after tomorrow she will pretend it is all in the past, that she only misses that she has no special person to turn to when she has a bad day, it's not that she misses him and him only.
Tomorrow he will be in the bar alone, since she told him she would not talk to him that night; he drinks some of the local beer to be friendly, smiles at the barman but there is no-one he can have a conversation with.
The day after tomorrow he will travel home to be with his wife and child again; he is puzzled when she tells him she assumed that a few moments relief thinking of her would make it difficult for him to go back and be the family man.


Wow!  this submission was accepted to the 6S Blog publication on 03/03/2010
Pleased as punch!

Another morning...

How can my skin be sensitive now? I have pushed it outwards from my core, my body; I have converted the comforts of wine and crisps, chocolate and bread and plumped out the space between. It should be deadened from all the time it has spent with only the answering pressure of the mattress, pushing back at my weight. It should be as numb as I feel without you to grip me.

But I feel the slide of the satiny covers, cool against my leg as I move it to where my body has not rested, my skin twitches as a fly tiptoes across my rounded shoulder. My reactions are sluggish but not gone, I am only hibernating to recover myself.

Remote

Sometimes I wonder who I am chatting to really when I message or e-mail him, physically all I can see are the words we send to each other as we have the electronic conversation; it's attenuated nature is not immediately obvious as my mind fills in the gaps of a missing voice and tone, face and body, shared and separated histories.
The words jump from the screen direct to the brain, and I interpret the simple facts of the communication with him, decorating them with the smiles and laughter, touches and tears that we used to share; although sometimes the words carry out a bypass operation and head direct to my stomach.
I type at my keyboard picturing him at his, concentrating on what I have said, and choosing the words to send back to me; I tease my words into a shape I know will tease him, but not too much, the situation demands that I hold something of myself back until he changes his mind and comes to be with me again.
I use the words to bring, bit by bit, the desired result closer, subtle reminders of what he is missing, some not so subtle remarks as to what I miss, I am playful as I build up an edifice of memory and longing and closeness; looking to evoke a yearning nostalgia that can be uncorked to fizz and be joyful again.
He writes "Talking to you makes me have thoughts, but whereas before I would let those thoughts lead me they don’t now!" and my gut curdles as I digest the realisation that thinking about me has lost the power to move him the way it used to.
And with that I realise, the words I see from him are filled with a backwash of emotions that I provided for myself; he sees just my words.

Memory

Why do I struggle to remember your face?  Yes, of course I have photographs I can look at, snatched pictures, although none from the time we were together, and certainly none of us together; you'ld never even know we'd been in the same room...  And yes they capture your physical likeness, but why can I not picture you in front of me?
I try to bring memories to the front of my mind, but although you are there, you are also strangely absent.  The time I picked you up at the airport and you noticed my bald tyres, and after searching for and finding a garage we had to spend an hour or so hanging round the reception area smelling of rubber and cheap coffee; when all I wanted to do was pull you to me, oblivious of anyone else.  But I didn't, and you didn't either, and now I wonder where you are while I cling to shards of the sunnier past.

Loss

Eyelids itching, tightness at the corners.  Hopelessness, feeling an idiot for not being able to change the course of the world.  Pressing at your eyes with a tissue, tears are hot to start but cool so quickly.  Words cycling through your brain, what if, I should have, what if, maybe I could have... I'm so stupid, it would only happen to me.  Songs going through your head...
"If I could turn back time"... if I could I would still be unable to make a difference...
"If I could find the words"... if only, if only words changed something.  I understand words, I'm good at them... at least in my own language, but I've never been able to use them to change things once in motion. 
Crying stiffens the eyelashes, they gain a little crust - salt?  sleep?
I miss it all... I miss the things I took for granted and now they are gone.

Sheridan's gone

He lies on the white cushion, a fuzz of dark orange and ginger hairs; oblivious again.  Sleeping, his breathing coming out in little snores.  Amber coloured, diamond shaped eyes closed for the moment.  His head rests on two paws, with his back leg and tail curled in front of him. 
Awake, he was wandering up to the closed doors and pausing, as if listening to see if she's there behind them. Rubbing his cheeks up against the doorframes, depositing scent and surely smelling hers too?  Does it smell different now that she has passed on?
He seems a bit confused not to find her after circling the flat a few times, and settles down to sleep on the cushion, shaded grey in patches by her darker hairs.  He's always been the more sociable of the two of them, and he's never lived as the only cat in the house before.  I wonder how he will cope, if he will change.  He's only a couple of years younger than she is, but always seemed more kittenish, less grown up.
I am reminded of her with the minutest of routine things; her piercing miaow everytime I moved, as I obviously needed a reminder to head to the food bowl; her ability to weave in and out of my walking feet, almost but not quite tripping me on a daily basis; her jumping up onto the worktop so that nothing is safe.  And now I am able to get out the butter and leave it on the side to come to room temperature without her knocking it off and over so the lid comes off and she can get into it to lick to her hearts content; but now that I am I wish I was not.
I keep thinking there should have been something I could have done to prevent it.  I almost want to have something to feel guilty for, so that I could have made a difference.  But I am glad I was there when she fell ill instead of having a night out on the town after the christmas party, to wake grumpy and hungover and unobservant.  And I'm glad I was there when she went; it could so easily have been when I was away for the weekend, and the thought of returning to find her cold would certainly have kickstarted the guilt engines.
She was a scratchy bad tempered thing when I first got her, but over the years she mellowed, and she spent the last night licking fish paste and drops of water off my fingers.  She went out of the world with tenderness, but tenderness did not leave with her...

songs that go round your head

Invisible

There are so many cliches about cheap pop music and it's ability to move you... when I find a song that chimes with my mood it is so difficult to let it go in order to let other thoughts or ideas into my head

I feel like I'm invisible

And of course there is a selective filter going on, as I am picking the "ear-worms" that go with my mood, but sometimes songs or phrases stay in my head for days or weeks whether I like them or not.

If you like it then you shouldda put a ring on it

You treat me like I'm not really there

And you don't really care

2 weeks on holiday with Beyonce stuck in my head was not something I chose, but even I have to admit that the Uh Uh Oh chorus was somehow catchy

It aint going nowhere

Of course the internal narrative just glosses over the lyrics I don't know, or it loops back to a part I do. Sometimes, even with songs I know I get stuck in a loop and can't remember the next line, or how to get to the chorus

And I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain

I suppose they fill a need to keep the brain moving but without thinking too deeply on the situation. Phrases work the same sometimes - I assume Richard Dawkins has probably already patented 'The Selfish Meme'

And you don't really care

I know this romance it aint going nowhere

Welcome to oblivion... all of my thoughts collide

And they stay in your head for such a long time... when a song plays that I haven't heard in 10, 15, more years, I can still sing along to the words, not like it was yesterday but with better than 90% recall...

And now you've disappeared somewhere Like outer space

I thought for a long time that it would be great to be able to put revision to music, so all you have to do is hum the tune in your head and all your Physics 'O' level stuff comes flooding back... but I suppose it's as much about the words and the music together

I feel like I'm invisible

Serenity

Serene... Serenity... even the words themselves sounded nice. And to be serene was one of her early yearnings, to be aloof and calm, to somehow float above the experience of life, unruffled and tranquil. To be herself in a petty, irritating, immediate world, and for that self to be somehow clear and immutable. She supposed it started with not wanting to be upset, or hurt, or ignored. To be upset was to be ugly, to be distorted by feelings she had no control over. To show you were upset made it worse, people noticed, people commented, highlighting the difference between you and the self you wanted to be. Serenity seemed to be the opposite of the things she didn't like about herself. Building cold walls, a space that stopped people getting in as it prevented the ugly things getting out, an icy moat between her and the world. 'The Lady in The Lake' was an attractive meme on the face of it although none of the Arthurian tales she read ever explained why the lady was there and what she did, but perhaps that was the point. To be a character rather than a person.