I’ve decided to carve your face. Oh, not literally, of course. Guinevere, our clay sculpture teacher, said we should try making something familiar. And what’s more familiar to me than your face?
The homeopath talked and talked and talked. Of miracle cures and deathbed recoveries. Amongst it all, there was something about him being sued by the family of a young girl who’d died, but he didn’t care about that because he was right about cancer and everyone else was wrong.
A virgin, it said. The book in the library told me what she was, and what I was, and why I could see and touch her. She’d chosen me because I was a virgin. Someone pure, the book said. I smiled at that. My sister read the book beside me, while I stroked her hair.
‘Calm down. He’s fine. He’s fine,’ I say at least three hundred times before she stops yelling, but she’s still crying, the crazy bitch. ‘Fuck, Mel, it’s not like I’ve left him on the side of the highway! I can look after my own son!’
A small angry woman, no doubt Bundy’s wife, suddenly stormed through the department. Barefoot and equally red-dusted, she scuttled to the bedside and punched Bundy in the upper arm.
lurching out / from the split wooden pot we thought / would contain it
Your home in my chest became / the imaginary world beneath / childhood blankets / I tucked myself away in.
New green stems didn’t snap away, / they bent soft like a baby's arms
I walk to the kitchen, the cupboards empty but for a jar of instant coffee. With a bent spoon I stir the murky brown liquid, sipping its bitter distraction by the sink. Outside the sun is glaring at me. I stare right back into it, wanting the white light to bleach my veins and make me heavenly again. But it’s no use. It’s spread too far now, in between my toes, my groin, behind my knees. It has wriggled its way into my ribcage. A glorious, greedy dictator.