Flip flop

Flip flop

by Gillian Fox

 

The snow had arrived late this year. Towards the end of February, when a few brave flowers had begun to reveal their colours to the strengthening sun only to be engulfed in a sudden cover of white. Winter’s final act.

At Christmas it had been mild, yet again. I had wrapped myself up in scarves and fake fur hats that perfectly accessorised the season, if not the temperature. Photos of me from then show me pink-cheeked and smiling. Cold, but happy; festive, like a smiling ice-skater who carries the scent of cinnamon with her wherever she goes. Part Judy Garland at the winters ball, part Caucasian eskimo.

The photos didn’t show that my cheeks were pink from heat. I had spent most of December steaming slowly from beneath my many layers, less festive goddess, more boil-in-the-bag rice.

I wasn’t happy either. I could feel him slipping away from me. My fingers curved around his arm like a vice, white knuckled as I tried to cling onto him. I was mad about him. Madder than I had been about Matt or Joe, even Harry. I tried to contain it, curb all my natural instincts, but I failed again. I was left, overheated and inappropriately dressed with a pile of presents that had no one to open them. They sat, beautifully wrapped, judging me from beneath my perfect tree.

I burned them in the wood burner on New Years Eve. Just me and Boo warming ourselves on the ashes of my mistakes. All that was left was one small beribboned box. Aftershave.

I couldn’t bring myself to ditch it in the wheelie bin, casually discarded among the empty prosecco bottles and the turkey carcass, instead I buried it in the garden in a spot close to my “soon to be returning” rhubarb.

It may have been the gin, but I wanted to use my hands. I wore the rubber gloves my cleaner keeps beside the sink. Their pink rubberiness protecting my nails from the mud, but still allowing me to feel the earth between my fingers as I buried my desires for his scent.

If the snow had fallen that night perhaps it would’ve all ended somewhat differently. Instead it remained dark, drizzly and aggressively mild. The ground soft. Pliable.

Now the snow is here. Two months late but thick and crunchy, exploding with each step I take, like the world is carpeted in bubble wrap. A final desperate push, like my own white knuckles, clinging. Holding. Trying to delay the inevitable springtime.

Life seemed all white knuckles and tight grips. The desperate cling of humanity to something, anything, familiar. The cling to the expected, the cling to the normal, the cling to the lie. The softness had long gone, all that remained was hard. Frozen.

It seemed to me, as I brooded beneath blankets, laptop balanced on my knees, phone within grasp, fingers moving up and down incessantly, that the lost scent of hope had permeated into my home. Snaking its way through the shallow grave and my UPVC French doors.

Lost hope smells bad. And it gets into everything. Curdled dreams in my curtains, rotting plans in the porch, the stink of failure that the Febreze of casual lovers could not expel.

Why not him? Why not me?

Had he not felt it too? The surge as we stood close to each other. The flip flop of the stomach as we ate together. I know he must have. The ring had disappeared along with the onion tart, still two courses to go. Thigh against thigh. Darting eyes. The always yes to more wine had become the always yes to everything.

She came here once. After it was all over. Just before New Years Eve, on one of those nothing days that stretch out in a fog of too much cheese and awkward familial encounters.

Did I know where he had gone? No, I answered honestly. I didn’t know where he had gone.

All that remained of him was the emails, the messages. And that final one. Business-like. Efficient. Cold. Sent ten days before, on Christmas jumper day.

I did not know where he had gone.

All that remained was the scent of what we had lost.

Lingering still.

 

Gillian Fox – Dec 2018

 

We speak in silence

We speak in silence

The wall is up before me,

so close I can touch my nose against it.

It wobbles, swaying like an insubstantial mist.

I move closer, pushing my head into it,

no, not insubstantial, thick like oil, dense and heavy like all I do not say.

“Are you alright?” I hear the question repeated.

I nod.

I live, I breathe, I squeeze hands and smile.

I can still smile.

The roof protects me from the rain.

I have blankets and penguins and Netflix and love.

So much love.

But my eyes throb, heavy with the expectation of strength.

In my weakness

In my weakness

my weakness, my frailty, my throbbing eyes.

He is strong?

Or is he gone? Long gone like all I thought I knew.

My fingernails are gone, bitten off in failed attempts to calm my racing heart.

It thuds within me, racing, lurching, is it trying to outrun me?

Did it leave me that day in Sainsbury’s car park?

Or did it leave me before then?

Is it decaying in the lost corner of the porch, where I forgot to pick it up,

when it took me over an hour to pick up myself.

Did I leave it there?

Amidst the scooters and walking boots, the discarded joy of life.

“Are you alright?”

All of me screams No.

I am wrecked, my soul is ruined, life is too big, too violent, too much.

I remain silent, desperate to talk, unable to speak through the wall of oil.

I speak in silence, wordlessly hoping for a translator,

for anyone who speaks the silent language.

You knock at the door, as I cower beneath blankets of fleece and isolation.

You bring tea and penguins.

You bring bread and warm hands.

You bring me a lost package, bloodied but beating.

You cradle it gently in your hands, my lost heart.

You had kept it safe for me.

We speak in silence.

A language of hands held and tears wiped.

Of big skies and muddy boots.

We speak in silence and write symphonies of hope,

descants of delight,

underscored by understanding.

We speak in silence.

And my heart beats on, a flicker in the dark.

Gillian Fox December 2018