ache1:
Did he always do that? Did he always travel backwards on the train?
remembering
Skunk always sat opposite but not there now, and laughing aloud to imagine her
query as anything but rhetorical, as if the woman from whose grave she is
returning might possibly answer her, here on the homebound train.
She
stretches her legs to rotate each foot on its ankle before dragging them back
beneath the seat; should get up and walk the length of the carriage, but she is
too tired; arches her spine, the pulling of both elbows back behind pushes her
breasts forward; pulls the full weight of her interconnected hands down upon
the top of her head and yawns hard as she can without covering her mouth, and
blinks repeatedly to clear her ears.
She
is less full of movement.
The card had not been specifically
brought, rather forgotten in this same coat’s pocket the half-year since the
funeral itself. “Mr ____________ will
please take cord No. 2”, its blank filled
in error with an unknown name. She supposed it one of the pall-bearers
appointed in the absence of either friends or relatives since neither she nor
Skunk had felt capable, and on its reverse a delineate coffin with all but two
of the surrounding numbers quickly cancelled through, and that relevant to her
encircled at its foot.
So here now standing upon the taken turf
with the same little card in her fingers, her given name scrawled in above that
scored out though the preceding “Mr” unaltered, remembering back to that autumn
morning burial’s bright chill in the dull warmth of today.
ache1: Well it isn’t long
now, it won’t be long now. Jesus.
talking almost as if to her own mother, to this woman she has only ever known exist in lunatic aphasia and passive memory and death, her requiescat punctuated with drinks from the bottled water in hand.
ache1: It’s all just going to happen as it happens and ahm, well... I’m not entirely sure why I came here. I really shouldn’t be... but you know, at this point what can I actually do? I’m going to have to... I’m just going to have to, to get on, and be... ahm, and be strong and get through this, for the baby, and for Skunk. He’s okay, he will be, anyway.
ache1: It’s all just going to happen as it happens and ahm, well... I’m not entirely sure why I came here. I really shouldn’t be... but you know, at this point what can I actually do? I’m going to have to... I’m just going to have to, to get on, and be... ahm, and be strong and get through this, for the baby, and for Skunk. He’s okay, he will be, anyway.
answering the unasked.
ache1:
So dumb. So very dumb.
ache1: I can’t worry, right?
I’ve got to not worry, and I’ve got to not be scared, and I’ve
got to not...
sighing, shifting her weight between her
feet.
ache1: Everything will happen
as it happens, and that’s it. And then, once we’re through this, then
ah, that’s when we, when we’ll start properly, when we’ll have our family. God
I don’t know, I mean that’s just... We’ll bring antler here and you can see her,
or him
knowing she only talks now to make noise
in its absence, and so stops.
ache1: I’m just so tired.
The matches unintentional too, the small
golden paper fold randomly salvaged from an ashtray in the hotel lounge, and
she will need only one of the two remaining: folded back upon itself and
scratched and scratched again the length of abrasive strip, it ignites a flame
to burst around the card whose quick burning she flips from herself to the
grass, where it consumes itself of all substance.
E.T. peers from out her satchel, his
both arms flat upon its leather front.
She
looks to him now taking up the whole seat alongside, and collects into her hand
his adjacent own.
They
are two stations still from home when the Braxton-Hicks begin.
