ninety-two by
seventy- three
and the blue steals in
at around
eighty
depending on how
you see it
yellow walls
meant
to kindle the brain
(like in the classroom
where they teach you
how to copy yellow)
but the blue
stays there
with his name against it
and they don’t teach you
how to paint
that
even the heads
still in yellow
but a different yellow
look down at it
in a pure cracked line
as if struck
by its explanation
of their plucked-out
petals
and
their breaking necks
it should have all been blue
but the one thing
you
remember
is the yellow
Inspired by Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers.
Yellow
Wednesday 10 August 2016
My hands shook as
you handed me the box.
“Don’t bother
looking inside”
Okay.
“Just keep it
somewhere safe.”
Safe. In my shaking
hands.
I put it in the
cupboard under the stairs, on a little shelf next to the ironing board, and
then made a cup of tea for the both of us. I forgot you only drink coffee.
“No, don’t pour
it away. I’ll drink it.”
Okay.
Perhaps it was
the puckered creases around your eyes but suddenly all I could think about was how
dry my mouth felt. You sensed my thirst and downed your tea until it burned a
pit in your stomach. I saw your eyes fill with the pain of it.
“We’ll be back in
a week or two. Don’t mention it to anyone.”
There was nothing
to mention. It was just a box.
“Don’t fiddle
with it, or put it anywhere-“
You stopped. Presumably
your tongue was too sore to continue.
I reached out and
held your hand. You nodded, suddenly resolute.
“We’ll be back in
a week.”
You left without
an umbrella and it was raining heavily. I watched you from the living room
window. You got about halfway down the cul-de-sac before stopping. The rain was
like sheets of nothing so you lifted your head, looked up to the sky and stuck
your tongue out. It looked like it felt good.
Three days passed
until I became curious.
For three days, I
carried on with the unvarying routine of my life and didn’t even think twice
about what was in the box on the little shelf in the cupboard under my stairs.
I even did some ironing, carefully extracting the board from beside the shelf without
so much as a look in its direction.
But then, on the
third day since you’d gone out into the rain, there was this smell.
It was like the
smell of expired fruit, a sugared rotting stench that seemed to coat the back
of my throat in a sweet glue each time I inhaled.
I don’t eat fruit
so, at first, the source of the smell puzzled me. I went to the fridge and
inspected its modest contents individually for anything similar in scent, but
there was nothing there that could match it. I even sniffed myself to determine
whether I was the source but soon realised that the smell could not be me, as I
had only noticed it when I’d come downstairs.
Downstairs.
I looked at the
cupboard beneath the stairs. I thought of the little box and your tired eyes.
You’d told me not to bother looking, but what about smelling?
The stench
swelled as I drew closer to the cupboard door. I turned the handle and, sure
enough, it hit me in full force like stepping out of a plane door into searing
new heat. I realised too late that gasping was the wrong reaction; the stench had
found its way onto my tongue and began stabbing away at my teeth.
With one look at
the shelf, I found the source of the smell. The box was leaking.
I rang you up.
The box is
leaking.
“It’s okay, just
leave it.”
But it smells.
“What of?”
Like warm fruit
eaten on a foreign night. Like the juice trapped in the folds of a bin bag.
Like a shrunken, lint-covered apple left in the bottom a rucksack.
Like decay.
“Bury it.”
Bury it.
“Dig a hole in
your garden and just-“
You stopped short
like the time in my kitchen with the hot tea on your tongue.
“Just don’t open
it.”
I don’t have a
spade.
“Use your hands,
I don’t care.”
Okay.
The box was
sealed to the shelf. I tried to ease it up from its position but my hands found
themselves slowly sinking through a layer of sodden cardboard. The box was
steeped in liquid and the sides had crumbled inwards at what had only been the
slightest pressure from my fingers. The smell now seeped out everywhere, having
broken past its cardboard barrier. Instinctively, I covered my hands and mouth
but there was no point, in doing so my fingers had brushed against something
and I didn’t dare breathe for fear of what I had touched.
The contents of
the box were warm. I had felt something warm.
And soft.
Did you tell me
not to open it because you were worried about the smell? Well then it was
stupid of you to give it to me in a flimsy cardboard box. A flimsy cardboard
box that could break open at any time and display its contents for all to see.
And why would you
make me bury something that was still warm? I thought about the way you had
lifted your head and looked to the sky with your mouth open.
I carefully
lifted the lid. And then I knew what had felt so warm.
Cradled by the
sodden cardboard folds of the disintegrating box, a tiny form wriggled at the
event of its own discovery.
I pictured your
tongue, stuck out and comforted by the cool rain.
Why had you given
me a baby to put in my cupboard?
Why have you
given me a baby?
You didn’t
answer. I couldn’t hold your hand this time.
Why have you told
me to bury this?
“Just do it,
please.”
I can’t.
“Please, it’s
not-“
Not what?
“It just has to
go.”
You told me to
keep it safe.
And I wanted to
keep it safe because it was so warm where I was so cold.
I don’t really know
how to hold a baby but I gave it my best shot. I know that there’s something
about keeping the neck stable so I just put my arm under that and hoped the
rest of its little body would come up with it. It did.
For a moment,
standing there in the cupboard with my arms holding this thing, I felt
perilously full. Not in a crying way, but like a thirsty child that has just
been handed a full cup of lemonade and told not to spill a drop of it.
I looked down to
see if the baby felt as strange as I did.
Its little
features were considering mine with an expression that told me it was as
puzzled as I was as to the situation we now found ourselves in. I looked at its
eyes and tried to work out what they were saying but they kept creasing around
the edges in a way that reminded me of the dry lines around yours.
Do our eyes grow?
This question was
not directed at you but at the baby you had made me put in my cupboard. It came
to me as I looked at its eyes, but not into them.
Surely these were
the same size as mine. Mine as a fully-grown adult.
I took it to the
mirror in the living room and held it up beside my face as best I could. It
didn’t understand what we were looking at and looked to me instead, swivelling about
in a way that made it hard for me to make a direct comparison. Eventually I grasped
that its eyes were about the same in size as mine but I had more white space
around my irises. Age clearly shrinks the colour from them.
Outside, it
started to rain.
I took the baby
over to the window and showed it the place where you had stood in the street,
in this kind of rain, without an umbrella. It liked the window better that the
mirror and so, when I explained what you had done, it seemed to understand why
you had enjoyed the rain so much. I know this because it stuck its tongue out just
beyond its tiny lower lip and looked up at me by way of response.
It seemed you
both understood something that I didn’t.
I know you wanted
me to, but I couldn’t go outside into the cold when I finally had something so
warm to keep against me.
Six days after
you’d left it rained again. Ever since you’d gone, it seemed to be raining once
every three days. I found this odd but the baby didn’t. It only stuck out its
tongue and looked up at me, its creased eyes widening in expectation.
I folded on the
seventh day, the day you’d said you might come back.
I was standing
with the baby at the window again, hoping that the sun would slip out from
behind one of the grey clouds sealing off the sky above us. I was standing with
the baby looking at the clouds and I was thinking about how the smell had gone.
And how I couldn’t remember when it had gone or why it had been there in the
first place. The baby had come to me completely clean, a perfect form discovered
in a decaying box, and it had stayed clean in my arms ever since.
It looked as if
it might rain but I suddenly thought that I could risk it, seeing as it was the
seventh day and seven is not a multiple of three.
Stepping outside
the front door with the baby felt like I was carrying all my organs outside
of my body. Perhaps this was the wrong thing to do.
I want to go back
in, I told it.
It looked up at
me with your eyes and I felt surer than ever.
I want to go back
inside.
Four of the
baby’s fingers wrapped around one of mine; its little hands were so very warm
against the skin they touched. I stopped shaking.
Warm hands mean a
cold heart, I thought. But no heart could be colder than yours on that day,
when you’d stood out here in the street and drank from the sky.
A cold wind cut
through the cul-de-sac and I felt as if I was spilling over again. The whipping
air seemed to be stealing great chunks of me as I walked down the street and I
suddenly found that a part of me hoped it would take more than what was
spilling over. As I came to your spot, I wondered why the baby made me feel so
dangerously full where you had felt so thirsty.
I pictured the
box silently decomposing on the little shelf, next to the ironing board, in the
cupboard under the stairs. I felt the sodden cardboard crumbling between my
fingers, followed by the unexpected warmth of the tiny figure inside. I
imagined myself, eyes so very wide, looking down at the little thing that had
brought me such an intense feeling of irresistible wholeness that I had wanted
to keep its little body against mine forever. Even if that meant I would
eventually have to spill over into nothingness.
I should have
buried it when you’d told me to.
You win. I didn’t
look down at the thing in my arms as I said this. I couldn’t look into its eyes.
Eyes that I knew were filled with so many colours and so much hope.
You win.
And so, when it
started to rain as the clouds had promised, I stuck my tongue out and prayed
that I would drown.
Step in
and it feels like water
is holding the skin
around your toes
up to
your legs
so you can
stride back into this
warm nothing
without air
and it won’t matter
Step in
like I told you to
and the corners
will become nothing
much like corners
any more
and
the only edge will be
the silhouette
you try to keep
about yourself
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