Mantra

He tended her leaves with warm water and a clean muslin cloth. He had watched her grow from a small mass of green and brown into the array of healthy leaves before him. He called her Persephone. He placed her in the bathroom where the steam soaked into her dry stems and warmed her from inside. Forced life up into the veins and capillaries that stretched out into her leafy fingers.

He never wanted something living in his flat. It was too much commitment and he couldn’t bear the mess and disruption. The asymmetry. His sister brought the little stump of life into the lounge when he was locked away in the underworld. She left a card by the pot. It said ‘Enjoy Life’. His sister knew that too many words were pointless. They didn’t touch him. She never came when he was at home. She couldn’t bear to watch him disappear any more.

He held Persephone over the bin many times. Resentful of her will to grow. He shouted and tossed her aside. Later he felt regret and cursing lifted her out of the dark, black bag because he knew she couldn’t find light there.

After a few weeks he began to accept her presence. Tolerate the persistence of life. She seemed to enjoy life more than him and he hated that. Yet he couldn’t help but care for her. Every day he sprinkled cool water into her tub. Tentatively began stroking her leaves. She got so big. He had to place her gently in new soil every year. He found some brightly painted dishes to put her in as the brown plastic bowls never seemed to befit her presence.

Slowly he began to love her. She made him smile. She made him feel warm. He wished he had the words to thank his sister.

In the library he had his head down and saw a dropped leaflet on the floor: ‘Plant Sale’. He went home and stroked the plant gently. His head was full of the need to speak. With a small pair of scissors he gently cut off a stem and a leaf and placed it in a bright container. He went unnoticed around the village hall with his clipping in an old shopping bag. When no one was watching he placed this small piece of Persephone on a battered wall-paper table. He did not look back at her. He knew she would reach the next person to need her. Carrying her mantra. ‘Enjoy Life’.

Recipe

What do I want? What do I want? She made her feet walk quickly to the supermarket. Today I will eat pea and ham soup and a crusty bread roll. The cashier smiled at the box of lemon cupcakes. A treat for the afternoon. Her words came across breezily. Did the cashier know it was a box of lies? That the lemon crème would be stuffed down so quickly it wouldn’t even taste. That there would be guilt. Then emptiness. An empty box sat in a rubbish bag. Another day tied up and deposited in the bin. She puzzled over the wastage. She was here. She left trails of debris. But it was hard to believe she was being.

In the afternoons she liked to walk for forty minutes. She took the same path everyday. Wore down the soles of her shoes. One day she saw eight ducklings. She watched them through the gate. Their eyes black and vital. Their feathers downy and soft. She wanted to put one in her pocket and feel its warmth. It was almost with happiness that she locked up the flat at 1pm and headed to the pond. On the fourth day there were five ducks. The sixth just one. She didn’t look up the next time she walked. She felt her throat stick with tears. She wished she didn’t have to keep going back but she couldn’t stop. Around and around she went. Carrying the sadness and inevitability.

She felt urgent in the queue at the chemist buying toothpaste. She wanted to shout to everyone. ‘Time is passing. It won’t stop. Can’t you see?’ But she smiled that sickly, unreadable smile and the checkout girl said ‘have a good day’. She rolled up the receipt in her fingers and left the shop thinking, I wish I knew how.

She turned another page in the TV guide. She tried to ignore the fact that she was calculating how many days she had sat in the same spot turning pages. Watching dates pass. At bed time she turned the page to the next day. Like turning down the bed sheets. Optimistic that a new day would come and she could make it better.

Underneath her pillow was the piece of paper with the other life written on it. She curled up in bed with the words crumpled in her hand and smiled. What I want is sun, laughter and a hand to hold.

Courage

It took a lot of courage to move herself but she knew she had to. These days were no longer something she could let slip by. It was grey when she took the first step. She stood down by the water and looked at the trucks going over the bridge. It was almost soothing to see how they were so evenly spaced. A mechanical ballet. Wheels gently rolling from one end to the other. Just the feint noise of their engines drifting in the breeze. It was easier to look right: at the new bridge and the cars. She could imagine it as any bridge in any town. Anywhere she didn’t really know. If she looked left she saw the old bridge with six tired arches. The hills. The industrial estate. The history. Her history. Its strange how home quickly fades away. How there’s eventually no place that means anything to you. She tries not to feel sad when people she played with as a child choose not to recognise her bothered features in the queue at the library. She knows she embarrasses them. How she is stuck like wax to her sadness. She taps her fingers on the books and pretends to read the covers. So many hours to fill. Checking out books she’ll never read. They are never enough. Other people’s words. Though she tries to assimilate them. Learn from them. No words seem to compare to the words inside her. The story she wants to scrawl. The downward curve of her lips and eyes. All the days spent clutching herself in the silent flat. The wasted hours ticking by. Hour by hour. Truck by truck over the road. There were people who tried to reach her. Hold out a line. But it was never long enough. Never good enough. It was not what she wanted. What she wanted. Who she wanted was very far away. In the places outside this town. Places she had dreamt of but had long since left behind. The beach. The red jeep. The fading sunset and her children sleepy in the back seat. That was where she had to go back to. The sun inside her head.

The cold of the morning made her nose drip and she wiped it on a battered old tissue. She looked up at the bridge. Put her chin in the air. Today she would take a ride in one of those trucks. It didn’t matter where. Anywhere was better than this. She had to move again. She had to get back on the road. With every ounce of bravery she could muster she moved her leaking shoes towards the exit ramp. Neither looking left or right. Just straight ahead into the rising light.

Event

It was no great event. Her disappearance. No line in the paper. No police report. She went to a different town. Cut her hair off. Threw away her driving license. The photo in her wallet. Sat in the park unnamed. Unnameable. Looked at people. Do you even know I am disappeared? They didn’t. They walked by. She looked ordinary enough. From the outside. But the hands in her pocket shook. Itched. That feeling of not belonging. Of desperately trying to be. It scared her. That she could be behind the locked door of her nowhere flat for days and nobody would know. She left the curtains drawn. In the sun. In the day. She lay on the floor of the empty room looking at the ceiling. There was no grid reference to mark her existence. No shining arrow. There was no way of knowing where she was. If she was. She shouted out in her sleep. ‘Who am I?’ There was nobody to hear. Nobody to put an arm around her shoulder and say you are you. You are here. You are somebody. Just roll over in the dark room on her sore arms. Trying to push away the terrible things in her sore head. And the dizziness. The dizziness never went away. Nobody even guessed. She walked for mile after meaningless mile in a perfect straight line. She was passing out inside but she smiled at people. Cooed at babies and puppies. Looked at signs. Pressed the crossing light. She tried to cry behind the curtain because she knew that all those years of learning to fit in had made her more remote. You have to transmit the right signs and signals to show you are in trouble. Shoot your problems into the sky like a distress flare and hope for help to come. She wanted to tell people that it was a mistake. That she was not strong. That she was scared. Vulnerable. Human. She became this to survive. To survive them. I had to. I had to. If I had not been strong they would have known they had killed me. I am reaching out to you to tell you of my murder. But I do it in silence. I do it with no expression of remorse. I do it with no tears. No words.
She lies on the floor. She has made herself untouchable. Yet all she wants is to be touched. She wants to be at an event where people laugh and cheer and wish her to be.