[lj idol] week two | "you don't want to hold on too tightly now..."
Count to ten: one, two, three, four-
And I’m still holding my breath.
Because this is not how it goes…"
- - -
I look up; my hair tangles in my eyelashes and I don’t bother to swipe it clear. I think I enjoy the view better like this…
My feet inch forward by degrees. I shift and re-settle and take a deliberate sideways step, certain in the aftermath that if I can convince the ground to right itself beneath me then the light and the dark and all the spaces that have appeared in between, they might start making sense again.
But the step I take is too far, and the elevation too high, and the practiced punchline that never arrived all those slowly turned calendar pages ago had simply marked the beginning of the end of The End.
Or so it turned out.
I wear new black shoes to his funeral.
They have a small, wedge-like heel and I find my distorted reflection in the smudged stained glass to be fascinating.
My nails are coated with a smear of clear gloss that catches the light. I stare. I don’t remember doing that and I don’t know what it means. Do people paint their nails for funerals? Does it matter?
Yes.
And no.
Tears drip from my chin and my face is cold. My fingers hold Lucy’s fingers but she’s too young to know why.
I am too young, too. But not too young to know why.
(And they are different things, after all.)
I do not let go of her hand, even when she wriggles and whimpers and throws her stockinged knees forward towards the grass in protest.
Hot wind whips the trees into a fury. It’s early November and summer is well on its way, but tears drip from my chin and my face is still cold in a way that has nothing to do with the changing of the seasons.
My lips are frozen and my eyelids are frozen and I think my bones are frozen to ice-solid.
There is a long, dark car parked ahead. Longer than any car I’ve ever seen before…
And when I take another step forward, when I inch my new black shoes with the small, wedge-like heel towards the shifting summer sunshine, the ground cracks twice, silently, and opens up.
Swallows me whole.
Lucy runs. Or maybe Lucy had already run. It’s not until her blonde curls are bouncing their way through my peripheral vision that I realise I’ve let her go.
She will save herself from this afternoon in the way that only a toddler can. Me? I am free-falling, unnoticed…
And the revelation is liberating.
*
previously on...
introduction
jayus
And I’m still holding my breath.
Because this is not how it goes…"
- - -
I look up; my hair tangles in my eyelashes and I don’t bother to swipe it clear. I think I enjoy the view better like this…
My feet inch forward by degrees. I shift and re-settle and take a deliberate sideways step, certain in the aftermath that if I can convince the ground to right itself beneath me then the light and the dark and all the spaces that have appeared in between, they might start making sense again.
But the step I take is too far, and the elevation too high, and the practiced punchline that never arrived all those slowly turned calendar pages ago had simply marked the beginning of the end of The End.
Or so it turned out.
I wear new black shoes to his funeral.
They have a small, wedge-like heel and I find my distorted reflection in the smudged stained glass to be fascinating.
My nails are coated with a smear of clear gloss that catches the light. I stare. I don’t remember doing that and I don’t know what it means. Do people paint their nails for funerals? Does it matter?
Yes.
And no.
Tears drip from my chin and my face is cold. My fingers hold Lucy’s fingers but she’s too young to know why.
I am too young, too. But not too young to know why.
(And they are different things, after all.)
I do not let go of her hand, even when she wriggles and whimpers and throws her stockinged knees forward towards the grass in protest.
Hot wind whips the trees into a fury. It’s early November and summer is well on its way, but tears drip from my chin and my face is still cold in a way that has nothing to do with the changing of the seasons.
My lips are frozen and my eyelids are frozen and I think my bones are frozen to ice-solid.
There is a long, dark car parked ahead. Longer than any car I’ve ever seen before…
And when I take another step forward, when I inch my new black shoes with the small, wedge-like heel towards the shifting summer sunshine, the ground cracks twice, silently, and opens up.
Swallows me whole.
Lucy runs. Or maybe Lucy had already run. It’s not until her blonde curls are bouncing their way through my peripheral vision that I realise I’ve let her go.
She will save herself from this afternoon in the way that only a toddler can. Me? I am free-falling, unnoticed…
And the revelation is liberating.
*
previously on...
introduction
jayus