Alchemy

I carry the white stuff in an empty plastic pot. It never leaves my pocket or the secret place in my bag. I walk around the shops with a sickly smile painted on my face. I drink coffee and console the girl behind the counter whose granny died. I do the right thing. I always do the right thing. I smile at scrubbed up couples with their children who play and shout and pierce my ears. But under the table I ram my hands in my jeans to stop them doing what they really want to do. Never let anyone see the crackles of disorder inside. I go to the hairdresser and shake. I cannot comprehend the image before me. Some stranger with a lopsided face. An eye that droops. A thousand lines of story behind and ahead. I have to keep moving my feet to quell the energy. The sparks of fire inside. The black silky cape moves up and down over my knees. The hairdresser pretends not to notice but asks if I’m ok. I smile and say yes. I have to get out. I have to get out. I ride the bus. I move. I can never be still. At rest. I am like bubbling acid in a vile. I bounce around jumping off the heat inside. I walk past places I think you might be. I believe you are in every car. I hope you will see me. I want those words you gave me back. I need to know somebody believes. You never doubted. You never rejected my terror. You could see the holes inside. The emptiness. You believed. I crave to be back in your room. I crave to be under your hands. When the silence descends and leaves me gripping my stomach in the bathroom I try to imagine you are there. Helping me. But the sirens rattle off the windows and I know I am truly alone. Not one person knows where I am. No one knows I am a woman disappeared. Not really here. Nothing more than a chemical trace. A trail of clues. Not quite DNA. Not quite human. Not quite alive. But doggedly breathing. Pumping blood. I sometimes believe I am on that bed. That I never walked away. I am still connected to that tube. Blue. Still. Turned off. At rest.

If I mix the white stuff with water it will be transformed by alchemy into a sticky potion. It will eat its way through the pot into my hands. Crying drink me. Drink me. If I answer its cries I will no longer have to struggle for words. I will not have to do the right thing. I will be excused. Allowed finally to rest in my own silence. Close my eyes and be. I finger the pot. I caress it. I love it. It is mine. My reality burning a hole in my pocket. I hit my head in the kitchen. I hate this place. I hate this place. Please take me home.

Demands

She put her arm around my shoulder and said ‘I think you’ll be ok here’. It was the perfect thing to say. The perfect thing to do. But as I looked out the window I couldn’t stop myself missing the garage with the mattress on the floor. The place with the man who drove his motorcycle into a brick wall. Who had a steel plate hammered into his head. You could feel the rivets when you tried to stroke away his anger. Tried to stop him screaming. Such a long time ago. So many places that weren’t really rooms in between. All part of the rivets of flesh on my face. The peaks and troughs of bad days and good days. All history really. Nothing of importance. Still, I am uneasy seeing it in the reflection of the glass and want to move backwards. It will never leave me. Unlike him. These patterns under my fingertips will never really fade with time.

It is unfathomable they say that I find this room so terrifying. That I need someone to walk me through the door. There is nothing here to scare me or keep me awake. I smile. I agree it is wonderful. Behind the smile I miss the terror. There is a beautiful symmetry to living in fear. A point at which your existence is clarified and refined. It is not right to say that. To admit that the normal things are the most demanding. The most terrifying. Eating. Sleeping. Keeping warm. It is hard to know how to do these things when they have never been done before.

The new carpet smell is not a comfort. The weight of my foot in the thick fabric is hard to tolerate. I walk gingerly. Not often. I tiptoe around this new place with the lights off. Stretch out my toes to reach the islands of floor that are not covered in fabric. This feeling on my skin is as unknown to me as walking barefoot on the beach. It is too pleasing. It starts me twitching. The nods and noises of paranoia that have kept me company. I worry that I will get lost here. Being nothing in particular. Having no place else to go. I tell myself it is only a pause. A motorcycle stopping not crashing. A quiet room. A window to look out of. An empty wall upon which to write the new story. She has started it for me. With her kindness and careful words. And so when I shut the front door and am all alone I know how to thank her. I put the blue necklace with the dead butterfly in a metal box under the bed. And I fall asleep without dreaming.

The Book That Changed Everything

She sat on the floor and thumbed through the tattered sheets. Pawed over the pages as if they were her very life blood. Code words she had learnt to decipher. He had been there. Written some of them down. She looked at the flow of his black ink pen on the lined paper. Confident. With a flourished signature and his number carefully printed after his name. 502. Five-o-two. She whispered out loud. Played with the sounds on her tongue as if, like a spell, it would conjure him up. She kept all these words like a treasure in a locked box under her bed. She took them out when she felt like she needed to remember. When she was desperate for proof of what happened. It was a comfort. To be the main character. To have her life inscribed in figures, diagrams and words. Little occurrences. Major incidents. Happenings that were so huge they became a relic of knowledge. She was so important just for a second. She liked that. She clung to it. But it seemed she was forgotten as quickly as the swipe of an eraser over unwanted words. As she sat in the dimpsy room soaking up the existence of these sacred pages she tried to ignore the heavy truth that they had removed her from the scene. She was nothing more than a body laid naked on the paper. A mix of atoms and chemicals to be observed and measured like a potion in a tube. She tried to convince herself that they looked for more in her. That they thought about the bread crumbs she had laid out before them. But the hastiness of their scribbling told her that there wasn’t time for that. Or interest. She consoled herself instead with the weight of the book. Two hundred pages heavy and full in a brown paper folder. She was there. Bold and crying under her bed. She wished she could show the words to everybody. She wished she could hold them up and shout ‘look’. Look at me. As she carefully folded the papers up and sealed them back in the metal box she felt the stillness of the room around her. The bells drifting in from the open window. She realised that it was not showing the book to everyone that would change everything. It was leaving it behind.

Fluent

He came to the door at two. I saw his form through the frosted glass. Tall. Bulky. Shifting his weight from foot to foot. We never made arrangements to meet. We never had to. I knew he would come. He always did. He was waiting. Biding his time for when he couldn’t see my hunched shoulders through the other side of the frosted glass. Then he could really come in. Today I was still on my feet so I opened the door to him without a word and he held out his hand to me. I ignored it. As I always did. The things were already laid out on the floor. As was our ritual. The tiny sealed packets that we would get through one by one. The rustle of the cellophane the only noise in the vacant room. Counting down the hours in these vacant days. Packet by packet. We stretched them out to carry us through the endless time. Occasionally we would look up from our busy fingers and catch each others eyes. Mine were dull and grey. Too many days and nights staying awake. Making sure no one would find me. Or stop me. Except him. His eyes were brilliant blue. They always shined. Like a beacon. He was the one who would lead me out of the rubble. Despite the leather patches on the elbows of his jacket. I picked him out in the white room. It was easy to spot him. Head and shoulders above the rest. Brilliant blonde hair. He saw me too. Fixed to the wall. But not still. Hands and eyes darting around. He came closer. My palms began to sweat. I knew right then that I wouldn’t be able to lie to him. That was his perfection. He got close. Looked at my face and asked ‘do you want it?’ My mouth was saying ‘no’ as I was conditioned but inside my head I was screaming yes. He knew. He never had to ask the question again. He broke the rules waiting for my real answer. Came out after dark and shared these things with me. He watched me drop down the rabbit hole and guided me back out with those big hands. You had to watch his fingers carefully to see that he was closing the packets that I unwrapped. He was only in the room for me, everything was for me. Those silences. The looks. The nods. I never knew what to say to him. My uninvited guest. We had no words to share. Just the fluency of our own language.