Losing Control.

Anxiety spreads like a stain in the dark. My skin pinpricked with the cold caress of fear. All bravery gone.

It was him. The phone ringing in the small hours. I wake half in a dream, drowning in light, to find myself trapped in the claws of night.

            “Yes? Hello?”

            Nothing at first, my own breathing, an unnatural stillness, like a presence in the room. I was aware of grit under my fingernails.

            “Hello? Who is this?”

            The air around me seemed thick, littered with threat. It is my own fault. I had tried to beat him at his own game. I should have known better.

            “I know it’s you. What do you want?” As soon as I utter the words I know it’s a  mistake. Don’t ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer. Put the phone down. Now. Intuition instructs and yet somehow I don’t act. I have turned to stone.

When it comes, the answer is calculated, cold with menace, and my throat constricts.

            “Revenge always leaves a stain.”

            The line goes dead. I am left in the dark with my own ragged breath and a cold sweat in the small of my back. Thunder peels through the sky and I shudder. I try to replace the handset on the cradle and it clatters to the floor. I cannot be here where he has been. I feel unsafe between the sheets.

I scramble to the door, across the landing and flick the bathroom switch, blinking in the sudden glare. My fingers grasp the basin needing something solid to hold, something grounded, more real than the threat of him. I stare at my reflection in the mirror, facing reality. What I thought to be a path of love has turned to poison. I am a victim of my own actions. Who could have told me that one dinner could have led to this denouement.

Roots is Roots

My favourite language to swear in is Africaans.

I’m a Yorkshire lass so this is a dilemma and I am what is known as ‘on the ‘orns of it,’ my little tangerine treasure.

If I take to Africaans every time I see the air turn blue; every time I prick me finger on the thorn from tha’ rose, noboby’ll know what the bloody nora I’m sayin’. I don’t mean to bang on about it but there it is.

That’s what happens when you stray off the path: you become like ice-cream in the rain: diluted; less yourself at the same time as being more, but when push comes to shove, roots is roots.

There was this one day and there I was in the allotment of a frosty morn, in me cups (oh, yes, multiple cups,) and I’d woke up in the shed, like the bleedin’ ice queen on her throne. Desperate for a whizz, I stumbled out to the bushes and found Madge pegged out like she was part of someone's washing in among the thorns. They’d snatched at ‘er clothes see, and she couldn’t fight free. Deaf to her pleas for help, all I could do was stand and stare. For all the broadening of my ‘orizons I forgot every word of Russian and Africaans I’d learned to express me sen and out slipped the loudest ‘I’ll be buggered’ I’d ever uttered.

Sesquillion Storyteller Sorority

Sesquillion Storytellers Victorious!

The writing dawbed on the wall resonates with colour in four foot high letters in the glittering sunlight, dazzling the cats that hide behind the broken window panes of the attic workshops of the building opposite. The poor old china dolls lying in boxes in the private mausoleum of the building’s cellar are not so lucky. Covered in dust and cobwebs they have to content themselves with the tatty tales from second hand nursery rhymes trailing from mother’s apron strings, the book grubbied with jam from teatime crumpets and toast.

It is a seldom seen sorority that gathers under the flicker of lamplight in the shadow of the oval archway. From all walks of life they come: Sisters, Governesses, Servents and Heiresses, but all wear the signature pin of the Sesquillion Sisterhood, with not a smudge on their name. They stand in silent appreciation of what the movement has achieved, their cheeks a-glow with pride, for once at a loss for words.

A Prayer to Isis

Isis, guide me. 

I lie prostrate before you in fealty and love surrounded by the byssus tasselled sumptuary of your inner temple, willing a deeper connection to you when I have no right to ask for more favour than you have already bestowed. See me spread my wings before you, naked in earthly beauty, that you can pluck my feathers at your will. I am a creature of your bidding.

Oh, Isis, my fidelity is sorely tested. She has come. You know of whom I speak. She appeared amongst the pomp and frivolity of Cleopatra’s ceremony and I became the prey of serendipity. She has come and whispered honeyed magic into my ears so that my mind is dulled. 

Is it you who sent her, you who guided her to me? For it is you who guide and love us always. Surely this is a sign of your love for me: that I am given this opportunity to spread my wings? And yet I smell death on the cuff of it. The opportunity is infidelity and wreaks of the underworld. 

If this is the path you guide me to, I risk the hurt of fraudulent betrayal. Oh, but my heart takes flight for the chance to be seen on this earth with all my ugliness and imperfection and yet still be caressed with love’s feathered wings.