On the shore of a river, red
Ophelia, martyred woman. Open your eyes and find yourself drifting down the river. It runs red beneath the flesh.
When you bleed your arm upward in an arc, with a swan’s neck grace, feel it stick against the viscous suck and pull of the water. Running red as a flushed cheek. Red as grace, red as violence, red as woman.
When you reach the shore you can’t make your left leg swim. Your fingers have pruned, shrivelled as if from some holy salt. You vomit pink water and watch it spatter the cowrie shells. Pink as a diet shake, pink as violence, pink as woman.
It is hours before you drag your body up the embankment, and you find yourself crouched, hunching small as a rabbit, beneath a willow tree. The water has gone still where you were drifting. There is the outline of your body amongst a thousand mottled flowers. From here, it looks like a bed of rue, all green and buttery yellow against that shock of dark water that only darkens as the sun goes down. Every breath you heave threatens to split apart battered lungs. Like a smoker, you gasp in any semblance of fresh air, greedy for the pierce and the burn. Feel it whip past your rib cage, three ribs smaller, narrow and fine. Narrow like a willow tree, narrow like a waif, narrow like a woman.
When you were a little girl, your mother went under the knife. Gertrude, a woman reconstructed. When her waist was nearly as narrow as her elbow, she let you see the pieces they took from her. As a little girl you remember singing whenever you felt sad. When your mother cursed at you to stop, you’d switch to humming. Hum the grief away and it was grief no more. Smoke and mirrors, a woman is a magic trick.
It was all you could think of when you tasted that bitter tang of scorn. You swore off men and instead were reborn. A woman’s hands, plump and lustrous, helped to pry back those sticky sewn on lashes so that you could better see her in the light. You thought of the magic trick when those girls, sumptuous and lovely in their low-necked T-shirts, climbed the stage in Circus stilt high-heels and sung ‘til their lungs emptied out. At the end of the performance, they went home with their boyfriends, heavy handed weapons weighing their back pockets and scorn on the edges of their teeth. Their eyes never met yours, but that’s girl power. It was as if your lips had been sewn flush to your teeth.
When you looked at her in the dimming stage lights, like fleeting light your tongue dissolved. Then, arms wrapped around your shoulders. His arms were the arms of friendly fire, the arms of men who reeked of sandalwood and came to you otherwise only in dreams. He said, “get thee to a nunnery,” the same thing your mother said when you came outside in a swimsuit, fourteen years old, brown skin warm beneath the sun, and shied back into your cardigan. A joke. He is only joking. Still you feel the sting of it, like he has figured out your magic trick.
Hours later you wake in the river.
You wait out the night in shivering cold. Your leg has gone numb. You are afraid to look at it, afraid to see the appendage missing, or worse: still there, intact, perfectly smooth. It is the way you felt when the sword first breached the swell of your hip bones, a sharp edge grating against what was otherwise yours. Violated, pried apart, like a cadaver laid out on a cold metal table. What are you complaining about? Martyred woman. Ophelia, quiet as a mouse, meek as a beautiful corpse.
When you close your eyes, you picture hundreds of years of poetry in your honour. Paintings where you remain red cheeked as some daisy adorned child. Painted by men, told by proud white women with degrees in literature who read aloud their work to husbands drifting in and out like waves. Such smart women, how self assured. How they understand why you weep, martyred woman. Ophelia, they understand why you weep.
When you open your eyes, the sun is coming up overhead, red as blood. The water shimmers its mirror reflection. You can’t bear to see the gore that waterlogged petals make, supple as rubyfruit, red as woman.
Who left you those flowers? Do they feel sorry for you, martyred woman? Do they weep, Ophelia?
You stand and follow the river some few hours West. All the while dragging your leg beside you, your numb leg, which still you have not looked at. You are a woman, two legs, white skin, long hair. Of course. You are a woman, breasts and torn apart privacy, mince for wolves. You are a woman, heart for a man, quiet heart, lion’s heart tempered into something lovely.
Girl power. You find none in the space between your missing ribs. You feel for the nape of your neck, intending to tap along to the rhythm of a pulse. You find none. So there is girl power there instead, the slender curve of a throat, the bump of an Adam’s apple-- she must be Eve’s apple, you think, and sensation pours in. Your laugh is throaty, mostly air, the vocals punched out of your chords some time in the night.
In your white dress, adorned with flowers. How you floated into the dawn and the adoring eyes of the artist. How you swam like a dandelion floating on air. Find yourself at the bottom of the pool, splitting your skin on cowrie shells. Find yourself breathing in the holy salt, your woman’s body unraveling. Find yourself hungry and wild. Red as dawn, you swim and you sink.
But you walk on. You walk on, Ophelia, martyred woman. The red beneath your fingernails.
When you bleed your arm upward in an arc, with a swan’s neck grace, feel it stick against the viscous suck and pull of the water. Running red as a flushed cheek. Red as grace, red as violence, red as woman.
When you reach the shore you can’t make your left leg swim. Your fingers have pruned, shrivelled as if from some holy salt. You vomit pink water and watch it spatter the cowrie shells. Pink as a diet shake, pink as violence, pink as woman.
It is hours before you drag your body up the embankment, and you find yourself crouched, hunching small as a rabbit, beneath a willow tree. The water has gone still where you were drifting. There is the outline of your body amongst a thousand mottled flowers. From here, it looks like a bed of rue, all green and buttery yellow against that shock of dark water that only darkens as the sun goes down. Every breath you heave threatens to split apart battered lungs. Like a smoker, you gasp in any semblance of fresh air, greedy for the pierce and the burn. Feel it whip past your rib cage, three ribs smaller, narrow and fine. Narrow like a willow tree, narrow like a waif, narrow like a woman.
When you were a little girl, your mother went under the knife. Gertrude, a woman reconstructed. When her waist was nearly as narrow as her elbow, she let you see the pieces they took from her. As a little girl you remember singing whenever you felt sad. When your mother cursed at you to stop, you’d switch to humming. Hum the grief away and it was grief no more. Smoke and mirrors, a woman is a magic trick.
It was all you could think of when you tasted that bitter tang of scorn. You swore off men and instead were reborn. A woman’s hands, plump and lustrous, helped to pry back those sticky sewn on lashes so that you could better see her in the light. You thought of the magic trick when those girls, sumptuous and lovely in their low-necked T-shirts, climbed the stage in Circus stilt high-heels and sung ‘til their lungs emptied out. At the end of the performance, they went home with their boyfriends, heavy handed weapons weighing their back pockets and scorn on the edges of their teeth. Their eyes never met yours, but that’s girl power. It was as if your lips had been sewn flush to your teeth.
When you looked at her in the dimming stage lights, like fleeting light your tongue dissolved. Then, arms wrapped around your shoulders. His arms were the arms of friendly fire, the arms of men who reeked of sandalwood and came to you otherwise only in dreams. He said, “get thee to a nunnery,” the same thing your mother said when you came outside in a swimsuit, fourteen years old, brown skin warm beneath the sun, and shied back into your cardigan. A joke. He is only joking. Still you feel the sting of it, like he has figured out your magic trick.
Hours later you wake in the river.
You wait out the night in shivering cold. Your leg has gone numb. You are afraid to look at it, afraid to see the appendage missing, or worse: still there, intact, perfectly smooth. It is the way you felt when the sword first breached the swell of your hip bones, a sharp edge grating against what was otherwise yours. Violated, pried apart, like a cadaver laid out on a cold metal table. What are you complaining about? Martyred woman. Ophelia, quiet as a mouse, meek as a beautiful corpse.
When you close your eyes, you picture hundreds of years of poetry in your honour. Paintings where you remain red cheeked as some daisy adorned child. Painted by men, told by proud white women with degrees in literature who read aloud their work to husbands drifting in and out like waves. Such smart women, how self assured. How they understand why you weep, martyred woman. Ophelia, they understand why you weep.
When you open your eyes, the sun is coming up overhead, red as blood. The water shimmers its mirror reflection. You can’t bear to see the gore that waterlogged petals make, supple as rubyfruit, red as woman.
Who left you those flowers? Do they feel sorry for you, martyred woman? Do they weep, Ophelia?
You stand and follow the river some few hours West. All the while dragging your leg beside you, your numb leg, which still you have not looked at. You are a woman, two legs, white skin, long hair. Of course. You are a woman, breasts and torn apart privacy, mince for wolves. You are a woman, heart for a man, quiet heart, lion’s heart tempered into something lovely.
Girl power. You find none in the space between your missing ribs. You feel for the nape of your neck, intending to tap along to the rhythm of a pulse. You find none. So there is girl power there instead, the slender curve of a throat, the bump of an Adam’s apple-- she must be Eve’s apple, you think, and sensation pours in. Your laugh is throaty, mostly air, the vocals punched out of your chords some time in the night.
In your white dress, adorned with flowers. How you floated into the dawn and the adoring eyes of the artist. How you swam like a dandelion floating on air. Find yourself at the bottom of the pool, splitting your skin on cowrie shells. Find yourself breathing in the holy salt, your woman’s body unraveling. Find yourself hungry and wild. Red as dawn, you swim and you sink.
But you walk on. You walk on, Ophelia, martyred woman. The red beneath your fingernails.
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