Chapters (14)
With a fork.
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11 AUGUST 1970
Tilde
Sat in the living room and looked at the light fixture until Owen came and asked me for calamine lotion.
I pasted it on chalkily where the itches itched.
Oh a mother doesn’t have to do much.
Just open a jar, and dip in a finger.
I imagine there must be things that bite that have not yet bitten me.
Should I feel his bites as my own?
The dog makes a weeping sound when I leave the room.
I shall sit here in the corner with my wooden crate of booze.
I shall drink a glass or two or three then have a little snooze.
I’d write for the Tivoli you know, a sketch show: modern woman goes up
in flames!
Forgive me Tilde: because you don’t answer, I just write whatever comes into my head.
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30 AUGUST 1970
To get inside my house you must open a big dead door on a silly little hinge,
progress through a garden with shadows and dead things underfoot,
a fence keeps out the curious,
a letterbox lets bits of the world get in,
sometimes there’s a sickly smell of daphne,
the footstep of a husband and the key in the door.
(Oh, the key in the door!)
When I cough, what a tremendous chorus of smokers!
A dead house has such wonderful echoes.
Have you ever known a fridge to hum the tune of an advertising jingle?
The hum of our fridge is the blood of the house.
It is one enormous placenta.
(Is that a word one might use safely?)
I am not sure of words anymore.
They have not got me anywhere.
They don’t love you, for instance, and they can’t look after you.
Quite possibly they can kill you.
The leaves are very still outside and the trees don’t move.
There is a noise of gravel in my ears.
I’m a little scared, Tilde. I’m not sure what I’ve done.
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