Warning: Undefined variable $image in C:\MAMP\htdocs\yucknyum.local\wp-content\themes\yny\single-zine.php on line 175
We fell in love on a grit box. We would watch the weather change and wave at planes, sing to the crows and throw wishes at the stars, our thoughts floating high through wind and cloud, across vacuum and galaxy and back down to grit. The seasons poured by us while the yellow lid of our box curved with our weight, our dent, our miniscule imprint of love on a widening world. We sang strong to the crows and wished the box was our home.
*****
First home again, I hit the switches; lights, kettle, cooker; on, on, on. The stillness could not be tamed.
I hated being in before her. The house had looked barren when I pulled up, the only one in the street with no lights on, a gap tooth in a smile. I tried to stay on at work but it was getting embarrassing. Too many emails and waiting on calls, it was obvious. People know these things.
As I’d sat in heavy traffic, slowly drifting home like a metal river slowed on rocks, the radio told of floods in Bangladesh. I drove past home after home with windows lit like square moons in the early dark of winter and glimpses of lunar life dripped into my dream; steam on kitchen windows and ties on the floor, hallway embraces and wagging tails, each moon its own world, static and grounded and alien to all comers, “...with almost one million displaced.”
Steam pushed out from the kettle and pipes began to creak but the heat was slow. It was in deep, into the bones of the house. The rooms up the stairs were vacuous and all warmth was lost to them. There was no atmosphere, no life.
When she got back I was watching nothing on the telly. I’d eaten and the key in the door shot guilt through me. I tried to seem relaxed and cheery, put the look on my face for her, but she went straight to the kitchen. She stayed in there, she with her wine and I had mine.
Sitting in my house, staring at a Toy School newsreader talking of the monsoon through the square window, it occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t my house at all. Maybe I was house-sitting, that I was playing a part and that maybe nothing could make me settle here again. There always felt something in here with us, a snowman lurking, a frosty dead eyed bastard sucking on us, a never crying, never giggling ghost, stuck solid in the midst of our lives. He wedged between us and in the vacuum of desire we suckled him on defeat and now we sat in the crosshairs of our own silence.
I shook myself, drink kicking in at last and heat in the bones. The news droned on of more dead and always more dead as I moved through the house. I wanted to say hello.
I opened the door to the kitchen and a plate smashed above my head. “FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT”, she screamed.
I stood in shock, briefly thinking that it couldn’t be fixed. It was shattered on the floor, too many pieces. There was water boiling over on the stove and a dark sauce bubbled like lava in a separate pot. A crusty French baguette lay on the work top, with two round slices that sat like wide surprised eyes bearing witness.
She swayed and stared madly into me, getting right in there, past the gates and the driveway and up again into the attic like there was desperate decorating to do up there. I stooped to pick some shards off the floor thinking ‘maybe with enough glue’. A vicious growl rose up in her, so loud and base I heard fissures in the seams of me. As she let this torrent of rage go I felt the earth liquify and the air split across my ears. I had nothing for this, nothing like this existed to me and I froze as her yell melted icebergs and changed the seas. She roared low and high and registers unheard, eyes closed yet everything open, draining it all; on and on and on.
When finally it stopped she held onto the worktop heaving for breath, a half drowned mammal fighting for oxygen. I managed to rise and move toward her, I needed to hold her but in truth, more for myself and my own fears. As I moved to her she flung her legs at me and screamed me back. I stumbled, drink mixed with broken crockery and crashed to the ground. She lurched for the breadknife and lashed it across the air, growling again as the fight returned to her lungs. I lay motionless, watching her frenzied attacks, swiping and thrashing at the steam and the ghosts of despair...
And then it stopped. We breathed for a while.
We drained the pasta, splashing in some olive oil, and ate spaghetti with puttanesca sauce. We looked at one another while we ate, looking more than the last few months combined. When we’d eaten I said “We should walk.”
“Okay”, she said, “I want to see the moon.”
We walked well, clean and almost weightless. I felt the bounce in her stride and we covered ground for hours. Each step was better than the last; it was there for both of us. Miles out, in the pitch dark, we started to run. We jogged and laughed and sprinted and screamed, breaking the silences and cheering not to be the broken. At last we fell to the ground, facing the stars as our breath cascaded like a haar across the universe.
We lay and watched a heavy blue canvas sky with button badge moon creep above us whilst we whispered over the sounds of sleeping mice. Our thick lambs wool blanket kept the cold soil from us and we murmured to one another of storms on Saturn and the mountains on Mars. I told her of a long lost life of ache and pity as she touched the scars in me with kiss and smile and we sang strong to Cepheus and Cassiopeia.