Thickening Water
I shake.
My eyes are stinging with tears
and the blood which lies visibly under the surface of arse and thighs,
around ribs,
begins the pin prick trickle
as you split the skin open with each timed flick of the whip.
Trying to scream,
cleaving, like raw meat hacked off the bone,
the soaking rag gag,
I have bitten through soft lower lip in two places,
my position so tightly maintained.
Mouth like a gutted salmon,
you kneel,
pull my chin up to yours,
lick the salt of my eyelids, cradle the dead weight head;
you let me know that you know that I'm sorry.
I spit out the gag; you eat me
voraciously,
lower me onto my front
and trail the spatters of purple and red with swollen fingers.
I wince and shudder,
gooseflesh spreading through spasming limbs:
I am broken
but we both know it's taking me longer and longer each time.
I haven't been sleeping lately.
The nights are heavy, it hurts to lie on my back:
It's never enough.
I make you bind me and pick out a cane but your heart's not in it; we quit after six
and settle for cinnamon coffee, and Silver Screen Legends on Five.
Old scar gets lost in wrinkle as you cackle cracked teeth at the telly; your skin like a bird's nest,
you criss-cross and crease
and even the homemade name on your knuckles skips back and forth from Deb to Dee.
You want to put a baby inside me,
you told me this morning.
Oscar
Stanislaus
Popeye.
Unless it's a girl,
in which case you don't know.
You tell me how you will pat and rub my belly,
how you will make me not carry even a tiny potato,
how I will be your Queen and you will be my slave.
I see.
You will relish this role for a week maybe,
it will lapse before I am showing.
You will go elsewhere for sex if I lack interest,
give me a list of possible fathers
and interrogate every action.
You will make me do anal
- so we don't hurt the baby,
I churn;
I try to picture you at six but there's no mirror to what I imagine,
you have no photos.
We joke on the phone but your voice is thin and you ask me to send you some money.
You're on remand again, accused; a combination of anger and booze,
We assume they'll sentence you this time;
my guts are dancing.
I tell you I'm working,
I smile,
- I'm wiping arses in the local old folks’ home.
I crook our purple phone to my ear,
trace the line of tiny red dots from my elbow to wrist,
- they have industrial cling film dispensers!! I say,
I'm straining to crackle your laughter but nothing will break you.
You tell me you're horny
so I start to bring myself off but the credit runs dry,
I come
to an empty line.
I strip
and leave the phone off the hook
whilst I think about painting our bedroom
and nap on and off towards dreams of you, purple and yellow.
I've decided to test you.
If you don't spot my tactics it means you are using, I reason.
I root out all of the old prison letters you've saved
and copy the first one I find, word for word, to a clean sheet of paper.
You said you'd turned a new leaf, well let's see.
Posted, I buy 20 marlboros,
Finger them,
count them, crumble them up and throw them away.
My nails stink but my willpower, fucking amazing.
Court is in 28 days.
I make you a card with paint and glitter, neon pens
and a snippet of hair from my head.
I consider the option of cutting my limbs off,
one
at a time
and posting them to you in secret parcels,
one day springing to life like a human jack in your box.
It will not do.
My bruises have faded,
my scratches and weals have healed
and there's no one can kickstart the car like you do.
I use my V.O.
Against all the odds I'd stacked, you've noticed my home made drug test
(repetition letter),
- You silly girl, you say and we laugh till we're crying like earthquakes.
I'm wearing the feathery skirt like you said to.
As planned, you watch
as I lower
fingers
to
crotch
and run through the Cherry Popper Daddies C/P DVD I was watching last night:
- I was thinking of you.
A guard starts to walk our way, his right arm is raised; he waves,
head shaking in your direction;
We roll our eyes; I straighten my feathers and lean to your cheek,
your sweat pure caffeine,
you reek
- I think I will eat you completely today, I whisper.
I lick
and jump at the whistle.
The hour is over.
Though I'm eating my meals from the bowl on the floor like normal, it's rarely the same.
I used the cardboard copy of you from the last time you left me alone at first
but you slid and tumbled time and again,
a crippled gull fumbling over its prey, you flapped and slipped on the lino
and I got sick of propping you up
so I tore off your head in a rage and set my lighter on it.
With no version of you at all, I can't swallow;
my belly burns with remorse.
I'm knotty.
I vomit every morning into my yoghurt.
What will I tell you?
There is this vulture in me which the Doctor is deaf to.
It scales the cage of my ribs; it seethes and strangles my too full womb
and shatters my bowels.
Its language is lost.
- Take this pill now and on Thursday return for another, she says. The first will terminate,
the second expel,
so I take the pill I am given and start to wait.
Court is tomorrow.
You're sick of wasting your money to hear me heaving tears down the phone
but my throat pulls tight against conversation; my larynx raw like bloodied bones,
I choke them down.
Rubbed ragged to gravel, I'm pocked;
I'm rotting meat every minute,
I'm scratching my ribs until nails are full to the brim with red flecked skin;
I'm cracking my shell wide open.
- Salt in the bath to heal a graze, mother would say,
she packs me away in a suitcase,
she is ashamed in the dream that chases me out of sleep:
A fire.
Four out of five children die and I can't make the new ones in time.
Their eyes ping out.
The cat seems to have your tongue before the judge and I can't help but titter;
the notion of you, so submissive,
hands like garlands of arthritic buds,
gagged in cuffs on hips drawn heavy through lack of exertion
and my glitter betrays the back of your neck, it bathes in your sweat
and makes you pathetic - Oh - What a picture!
I laugh so hard my stomach balls up, my sanitary towel spills over with clots
and snot sprays down from my nose and finds a new home in between my lips -
I rise,
chest heaving,
keeping my thighs together
and make my way to the door where you catch my eye in a second and stop my hysteria dead.
I told you over the phone that night, why I couldn’t stay at the Magistrates court:
it was starting to feel like a squirrel was cramming my skull with its nuts
and the fear of my head splitting open was making me twitchy.
You’d called with the verdict, angry,
- Eighteen months, you said;
- piss easy, you said;
- I’ll be out in a year so don’t go fucking around, you said,
then the money ran out, and the line went dead,
so that was that
and I tugged out the plug and crushed it under my foot.
As for the bloodied sheets, and the pills and the clinic,
I think I’ll forget –
I’ve already forgotten; I’ve not once thought of it all day long!
I’ll butterfly stitch this slice in my thigh then bleach out the toilet:
I’m going to do you proud;
I’ll root out my old Famous Five books - I’m going to read them aloud to myself,
each night a new chapter, like you did before things got awkward
but first I must do the important stuff:
I need to polish the paddles and sharpen the knives for when you get back -
and that soup I was going to make,
it’ll freeze but all I’ve got is an onion and I daren’t go out without asking you first
but I need new potatoes
and carrots and leeks,
and meaty stock to thicken up my water.