Letters to Ed

The road side was wet. I’d walked it many times, down this way, through this old lane, smelling damp earth and loving the tunnel of green . I thought of the maps we left each other . Tricky games, open to the elements, tampered by the wind and rain. I don’t know why we did it, perhaps we were inspired by Boo and the hollow tree. Thrilled by secrets, excited by ourselves.

We were heady, amaranthine ; connected by twig and stone and leaf. Once , to shock , he left a lock of his hair, I remember it now , between my fingers, a dark beetle-black lick, bound with grass . My reply was a tooth. As he rolled it in his palm he said he saw my mouth laughing .

We’d meet at night. I’d hear him pushing through the undergrowth, finding the spot I’d sent for him. Reading the signs. I closed my eyes and pretended we were feral. Perhaps we were. Grubby raw creatures inside nature, holding on to innocence, blending over rotting leaves. We sent animal cries into the night. Thick guttural moans stirred lighter, silver whispers. They left our arched clung bodies and mixed with dank forest sounds.

You can measure the state of my sanity , predict the scale of my craziness , just take a look in my cupboard.

Because on days like this, a list is something to lose and why would I want a list anyway ?
Only for the feel of the paper , in my fingers, rubbed between thumb and index , like pastry crumbs.

There’s tins and packets all over. I like their colours and cylindrical shapes. Brash anchovy tins with a key to the door and dried white pasta which soaks and swells to the texture of flesh. BOGOF appeals to my lazy ways. Like cutting and pasting a link, an abbreviation to meaning. Lazy lazy lazy .

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll end up like the crazy salmon lady. A real Lady .
The one who haunted my dreams when I was nine. She stole a tin of salmon. It was In The Papers. The story scared me but I never knew why. In dreams she came, hunched and headscarfed and I was always running to get away from her tortoise crawl as tins rattled around my ankles , a corner shop version of Hippomenes and Atalanta.

It’s bounty full at the moment. Pretty , smelly, shapely pieces to fit together, free form, because recipes freeze me. The swell of a red kidney bean, curvaceous as a 50’s starlet next to the shrivelled crone of a chick pea . Butter beans like pieces of the moon . And the feel and say-sound of c r u s h . As in garlic. Breaking out once the barrier is down, invading the kitchen and running loose with the melted butter. Fingers, perfume coated with raw-ginger-chicken and sticky Kikkoman as elbows turn taps, Praying Mantis style .

And for me , there’s never a right way, just the right time . As I peeled and chopped I thought , “How can I be an I S F P ? ” Because there is no yes-know, yes/no , maybe. It always depends. Just like cooking.
So you see, I really am stir( fry )-crazy , and on top of all this , flouting definition, sour-loud words spill from my mouth, for tea that remains incomplete……

” Fuck- ing Hell , I forgot the milk .”

(from This World to That Which Is to Come)

No one would have believed, in the final hour of the shop being open, on a weak sunlit Sunday afternoon, the man with whom I have corresponded with for over a year , the man with whom I have exchanged thousands of words , the man who has sent me strands of beautiful imagery and intoxicating ideas, would cross over my threshold. But step into my world he did.

Imagine, if you will, a transient creature, overhung on a Sungday, blearied from late night imbibing and little sleep; steeped in omphaloskepsis and reeking of melancholy, perched behind a tiny counter contemplating the futility of her existence. Waiting for home time but not particularly looking forward to it.

Allow me to present the bare boned facts : The shop was dead, that is to say it was empty save for me and my thoughts. I barely looked up as the bell jangled and jarred my already sorry-I’ll-never-drink-again-head.

” There’s a couple more rooms upstairs ” I mantra-d to my final customer as he walked past me and up the dog-leg staircase which leads to the middle floor.

I have little idea how long he spent up there or what he thought as he was in the tiny room full of books. I have since wondered whether he looked out of the window , over the rooftops and away into the fields. Whether he trailed fingertips over spines or stood still and undecided. I sat in ignorance, head inside a flickering screen , sucked inside thoughts of being else where, of meetings by the sea and stolen moments.

When he returned he was carrying a book. Bunyan’s in blue and gold. I may have managed a faint smile . I remember his fumbled fingers amongst my mumbled words , a jacket and a gentle voice.

” How does £3 sound ? “.

With you I become
more and more.
You emphasize me.

Your hair is so dark and shiny
that the rooks are no longer
omens caw-cawing
- now and now ,
their wings are curled brackets
{ to your magic spell }

I wanted to ask you to collect
the fallen pieces,
I imagined them scattered about your chair
,” ,, ,,
, , “, ”,
the licks of your locks,
inky punctuation marks
to put about me.

I wanted those black snippets
to clarify curves and
silently contain my breasts,
to form a parentheses
around the musky desire
of ( red orange lust )

.

when I fall to sleep I look forward to meeting you
inside the flicker of screen glow words but also when
I watch outside worlds unravelling.
believe me when I say I sometimes see the world through your eyes.
perhaps that’s because we are made out of
the same stuff
except
I click impatient
and you play the long game.

.

DIY has never been top of my list of things to do. But I love to watch the sky fall over itself.

The long fine line now has a bubble in its track. Yesterday the sun was beautiful through the clouds and last night I met a man with a peacock in his van. Yes, it’s true, in his van this huge imperious bird with a tiny head and a mesmerising beetle blue shimmer eyed me indignantly.

I hope today he finds himself in fields full of buttercups, bragg reflecting and posturing to the chickens and geese.

He had known her for 20 years and had loved her for 19 years and 6 months.

They met when they were 19 years old and he lived at 27 Broadlands Road. The house was red brick, with a garden, back and front. There were 9 steps up to the front door, which was painted red, but the paint had blistered and faded and peeled. The steps were overgrown .The second and top ones had broken flags where dandelions grew and the third step always swarmed with tiny black ants in summer months. They would lay in the tall uncut grass in the long narrow back garden and he would count and name the clouds as they passed between the rooftops.

From the time he first noticed her and every day since, she wore 2 plain silver bangles , on her right wrist, which rang as she moved. It was her sound , he often heard her coming. She moved in with him after 3 months. Their room was tiny, 3.5 metres square, just room for a mattress on the floor and a karam board on 4 bricks as their makeshift table. He owned 2 pairs of jeans when they met. One to be worn , while the other pair was washed, in the bath ; stamped like grapes and put out to dry , still dripping. The first time she visited his room, he sat cross legged on the mattress, a towel wrapped around his waist , like a skirt , waiting for his clean pair of jeans to dry as much as was possible on the leaky radiator in the shared kitchen before they could go out. That was when he realised he loved her.

While she slept he would study her face and body. He imagined a small boat in her hair as he had seen in a Man Ray photograph. Her curls and waves were the ripples and swell of an ocean. He wished he knew exactly how many hairs she had. It was a thought that came to him each time he watched her sleep. Her neck was the length of the width of his heavy thick palm and his hands wrapped easily about her throat. At the nape, partly inside the hairline was a pale pink mark, 2 centimetres across, too soft for a bruise. It was a mark from birth, spread , like blood in water, a tiny map. As she breathed he would count between her sighs. The gap was 4 seconds when her sleep was thick and full; when her body became limp and deep in its own workings. The count was 3 seconds when her sleep was fit-full; when her dreams had her living through the night.

She slept on either her side or her front. He preferred to watch her as she lay gently curled , half side up, one hand by her mouth, the other palm upward and loose by her side. As he lay beside her he thought of country landscapes, of hills and valleys in grey winter light. He wanted to measure her body, the span of her spine , the length from hip to knee , the tiny measurement of her smallest toe. The downy hairs in the small of her back were soft millimetres, her nipples pink centimetres. Wrists were thumb to first finger with room to spare and her ankle was middle finger to thumb.

Each night, he measured her body with parts of his own . Palm counting limbs and tongue measuring soft damp folds . He became a night time cartographer, mapping her , inside and out.

* ee cummings

I dragged my fingertips down dry stone walls on the way to school, sometimes knuckle knocking, just for the feel. The contrast of soft hard soft hard ,skin stone skin stone.

I counted tiles , black and white, black and white, in the chemistry lab and made stories from the periodic table , the teachers voice a background noise to my narrative.

I climbed up trees and dropped down precious things . A wooden ring from Africa , a glass bracelet from India . The far away places made them special. As a test, I would try to see where they fell . Watching them drop straight or twist and spin, to find them again, or lost forever, amongst the grass, beside the woody nettle stems.

I rode my bike. Fast down lanes. Eyes bunched to make black space for as long as I dare. Then looking through eyelashes , slit skewing my vision.

I collected chrysalis. Camouflaged amongst brown dried leaves and blown rags in sheds. An obsession for silky dust and thick fur bodies. Waiting with felt tips gripped to draw the sight. Of dry crack open to damp new life and pumping into rainbow wings. But it never happened.

I drank warm cider with lads in fields to spin our heads and loosen our tongues. Sticky-palm boy flesh pressing just begun breasts.

I split my chin against sharp rocks and tasted salt water . I watched bright red drip into rock pool . A tiny world rallied against the invasion that was my blood. Translucent crabs waving goodbye as they took shelter in dark crevices. Cold pink fingers holding the cut together as I ran along the beach, wet sand soul, wet sand sole.

I poured out words, vacuous and selfish. Onto pages, into ears. My moxie hidden under layers of self pity. A stranger abroad, setting the pace for things to come, building on how things already were.

I slam drank burning liquid to free myself. Rounded the edges off my insecurities and became brave. For nights. Gallivanting , dancing in shebeens and weaving home , loving in night time fields. I blew smoke rings and sank in opium dreams to wander inside myself as the heavy thud of my heart became a song . But cocaine crisp and hashish thickness didn’t cut . They just delayed.

I sat in a hospital . Breathed in formalin or disinfectant or death. One of those . Gripped a metal framed bed and ceiling stared, counting tiles, again. I licked a tear from the edge of an old ladies eye. Before it fell and spilled. Salty like the summer holidays . Just in case . [ It was the end ] But it wasn’t .