5. 5. 2009

The water is so cold. I take a deep breath to fill my lungs with oxygen and pour a dipper of it over my head. And it is still cold.
The water in Vellore is hard. It coarsens my hair and requires superior species of soap to lather. Still, I persevere, rubbing my thin, transparent sliver of Pears Dry Skin over my thigh, rubbing in circles around my knee, and then balancing my leg against the rim of the bucket, my calves and feet.

There is black dirt in grimy cakes between my toes, underneath my toenails and cuticles, grey slime coating my heel. I walked barefoot through the hospital campus this evening. Plunging my naked feet into puddles and gutters along with crow shit and dog piss and everybody else’s shoes. I studied the contrast of my then white limbs against the night grey of the cement roads, turned my palms upwards to catch the light summer drizzle from the sky. I could smell the pungent boonh of wet pigeons and dogs, my own sweat dissolved in the rain, the traces of yesterday’s shampoo in my hair.

I scrub. And scrub. Finally, I use an old toothbrush and a discarded floss stick to wedge the muck out of the crevices in my feet, and them rinse them clean.
Pink and white again.
White hardened soles.

Seven Guilty Pleasures

This is in response to Option 4 of the March/April Project -In The Garden- at Cafe Writing.

1) Jumping up and down on our black foam sofa in tune to Elvis Presley, until I slide off the edge and bump my knees on the stone-cold floor. Yes, it messes up all the new silk cushions, and no my mother does not think this is fun.

2) Filching my seventh piece of chocolate in under an hour from the refrigerator to satisfy my PMS cravings.

3) Standing stock still under a scalding hot shower, enjoying red tracks of water on skin, letting it dissolve away my contours and making me feel smooth, polished, shiny even... while the rest of the family hops from foot to foot outside.

4) Stealing mama's almond milk body cream and rubbing it furiously into my black knees and elbows, trying to make them the same colour as the rest of my skin. I'm a feminist, I shouldn't care that I look funny every time I wear a skirt. I shouldn't, really.

5) Reading cheesy romance fiction online when I'm too tired or unhappy to think. I'm an English Literature student. That's blasphemous ;)

6) Sleeping naked during the summer months and watching my brother recoil in shock and horror every morning when he comes to kick me out of bed. It's almost pavlovian, the way he reacts. 

7) Hoarding like a pack-rat. Old wooden spoons, chocolate wrappers, the cardboard sheets used to pack formal shirts, bus tickets, train tickets, torn bags, broken doll's tea sets, Ladybird books, single socks, a much loved dress from when I was 7, empty perfume bottles, ripped envelopes, cracked spectacles and what have you... and I'm 18, not 81 :) 

Days slipping into days. Nights are only. Rest periods. Or blank periods rather. Because days are rest periods. And the nights are exhausted and blank from too much rest. 

An Initiation

Shine. See the the smooth black oak
Shine to it?
Dark. Four thin
long lines on each square 

Big enough to fit in the 

hollow of your hand. 'Lindt' 

in curly letters, scrawled 

diagonally on each piece.

Snap. Hear the snap as I break 

it? Pop of air from between 

your lips, clean, powder-less 

break. Take the piece. Hold it 

between your three fingers 

feel the edges melt into the 

grooves of your skin.

Smell. Sniff it. Heady, strong,

intoxicating. suffocate. You 

cannot drown in this smell 

this unique smell that only 

Eighty five per cent Coal black chocolate can 

Give you 

but 

you can Suffocate in it yes it 

tends to overpower you 

completely until you're 

smelling through the pores of 

your face even the holes 

in your ears the slip of air 

behind your eyes. Smell. 

Let it overtake you.

Bite.

Swirl. Suck. Nibble a little. 

Bitter coat on your tongue 

turning sour and then 

nauseous and flood of 

feeling tight very tight 

little little drunk but 

in a good magic lights 

exploding in my head kind 

of way with my heart 

melting swimming in butter 

and cocoa spilling 

into all the nerves of 

my body and 

taking over vibrating 

through my pores 

I have liquid heart flowing in 

my nerves liquid heart 

Vibrating.

An Interlude

Of shadows and that thing between darkness and light.

It is so hot. 

So hot.

I have both fans running full blast and still my armpits, un-waxed and sweaty, smell. I lift my legs, cross,

touch. 

Huge, Goliath-an, flat black imprints on the ceiling. 

Rusty white ceiling.

I close my fist on the fan. Squeeze. Pressing air out as if juice from an orange. Spinning white orange.

On the ceiling the hair on my skin is invisible, the filed tips of my nails blurred into my podgy fingers. The ceiling tells no lies. It is more truthful than the mirror that dissects your face into colours, the photograph that distorts disfigures you into muck-white, plastic-thin statuettes.

The ceiling talks only of shapes. 

Larger than life.

Blacker than midnight. 

It outlines you.

Swallows you.

Whole.

Unbroken.

Plasters your protrusions to make you smooth, shiny, 

scarily real.