JANE ORMEROD

DETONATED

Is this what it’s like to be dying? Naked? Holding you in my hand, your fingers indented between the blades of my shoulders whilst the sun stains the window of the room? My eyes close, you trace my cheek, and I know you are thinking of her.

This is what happens when you call to say “Annie, you’re not making sense,” then you laugh like a jackass and I look through the window and realise there is nothing. Nothing. All I have is inside this apartment. This small square room, a seventies telephone, washing, a bed, lilac grey shadows. A bed that is my bed, not your bed or our bed and the sun is glowering and I picture it shining on you, in another place, maybe in snow or fallowed earth or perhaps abroad where the sun has not yet arrived or has already fled because, Jim, I don’t know where you are and the only thing that keeps me here in this room are my words and the heat and the colour of our flesh.

My eyes are bleeding. I crave those hips like yachts to cling to whilst the room becomes a lake and I don’t understand why you behaved like that on Saturday but … if I keep alive the way you swat imaginary gnats from your elbows, the way you tiptoe among roses and howl at machinery and men wielding hods … well, perhaps I can wade to the other side of this lake, clamber through the window and move on. This is what I want. This is what I have to want.

The kappa, you once told me, is a Japanese sprite which drags horses into rivers, its power source being the hollow on top of its head which must always contain water. How to prevent your horse from drowning? A low bow, you explained. Despite its devilishness, the kappa is polite and will always return the greeting. Drip, drip. And Jim, this is what I’m doing. I’m already in the water but if I can only rip away this equine head, return to me …

The water is deepening. It’s not a dream or story. It’s real. My legs are exhausted, my head immovable and the water is rising and I find myself smothered in a coat. Guillemots shriek as I plummet and all there is below the surface is another room. In my pocket I hear a ticking bomb and I know beneath this coat I am nothing. No skin, no plumage, no scales, no wings. Just a layer of feeling I was unaware I owned. So, this is what I’m reduced to. Naked with you and nothing with me and I’m unable to shake off the ticking and I don’t know how long I’ve got before the world opens her legs and spins mad.

Drip, drip. Noise ascends, water recedes. A lit fuse racing and these pearled buttons are stuck, the pockets sewn, my fingers clumsy and all I want to do is tear off this fucking coat and run and swim and I can’t. And if I have to die, I want it to be as myself but it’s impossible because you robbed everything. Those layers of feathers and fur and skin. My hardness is brittle, my softness easily bruised. How did I become this? Maybe it was your room. Those white walls, picture window, wooden floor, the Miró moon and mountain summits. Caught in the overhead cables, I was swallowed by you. Maybe all I can do now is to cover up this coat and build a new outline. Hope the explosion separates you from me.

That I can start again.

Without love.

Detonated.
 

Originally from England and now living in New York City, Jane Ormerod’s poetry and prose has been published in Rogue Scholars, Stained Sheets, Words & Pictures, Psychotrope, Magma, and Take 20. She is an enthusiastic regular on the New York poetry and performance open mic circuit and has featured at many venues including the Bowery Poetry Club, Rockwood Music Hall, and Nightingale. Her website is www.janeormerod.com.