golden moths
Watching the hawthorn blossom and fall silently past her window and float down to the courtyard like snow
She didn’t feel like getting up but it wasn’t because of fear anymore and so she stayed there where she was
And she remembered how she had imagined herself laying here watching the rain whip the leaves of the palm on the bank but she hadn’t even noticed the hawthorn then
I follow cats down the stairs passing an open door to a room where a child is lying on his belly naked but for a pair striped underpants lego bricks sprawled around him luminous in the morning light
and I notice how long his legs are getting
The kettle is already hot but her husband is not at his desk
I catch a reflection in the glass and I see a woman looking back, watching me. She is younger than I remember being and she smiles softly but before I can react she turns away and walks towards the house
We will be gone before the jasmine flowers again
And
It had been months since they got the letter and she had collapsed onto the floor
She photographed everything
taking the same photograph again and again.
You don’t want to miss anything you don’t want to forget
She was behaving as though someone had died her husband had said but she didn’t know how to tell to him that someone had died and that someone was her. He would tell her that she should not be so dramatic
The cat is pawing at my face her eyes big and hungry.
It must be later than i thought
It hadnt even been a year. How could she let herself become so attached when it wasnt even hers to begin with
a door slams upstairs
All the cupboards are emptied out and their doors flung open wide. Cardboard boxes stacked near the front door
She was acting like she owned the place
And when eventually she sat up and dragged herself from bed and into the bathroom to drink from the tap she looked at herself in the mirror resting on the sink she found she couldn’t see her reflection anymore
Perhaps she had drank too much wine the night before
She had already photographed the room she thought but not at this time of day or in this light
She could hear voices. Her son and her husband were somewhere downstairs and she could hear them laughing together and she followed the sound but it seemed far away and she couldn’t find them and she couldn’t be sure she had heard them at all
The windows rattled
She craved only tasteless beige food and ate it in excess standing up and she found she was drinking at strange hours of the day before it was acceptable
In every room she found that something was different and something had changed and. There were less things that she recognised as her own and less of the things that made her who she was Who did she think she was? and she stood around wondering what she was doing and why she was there but she picked up a box filled with the things and placed it on a stack of others.
She couldn’t remember packing them and she thought perhaps her husband was home already
On her way to the kitchen the shadow of her head moved across a triangle of light on the wall above the stairs
She felt the breeze on her face
and the cats are fed already content
She slept on her husbands side of the bed and each time she woke she had to remind herself where she was
There were strange piles of things and belongs where they shouldn’t be
She tipped her head back underneath
almost scalding
And she felt revived and clean and she decided to masturbate and as the water poured over her skin she thought about her husband who was away in Rome on business. She imagined his body strong and hungry on top of her his tongue pushing hard into her mouth
She woke suddenly inhaling deeply through her nose
It was the jasmine thick and sticky in the air
it didn’t make sense
She
she must have been wrong
She inhaled again addicted
But if she had been wrong about this what else had she been wrong about
She
She wasn’t sure if she had taken her fluoxetine and decided it was better to be safe than sorry and swallowed the capsule without water but it stuck in her throat and tasted of metal
And she really had changed
The cats were in their baskets understandably ruffled and one of them was yawling
And the next time she came down the stairs they were gone and it was quiet everywhere and her footsteps sounded hollow as she moved through the empty rooms for the last time and
Her bare feet on the floor boards
That was the end of it
They had looked at other places but she found a problem with each one and turned it down. if she couldn’t imagine herself there then she wasn’t going to go
She knew she had to go of course and that caused a confusion inside her
It had taken her whole life to find this place her home the house with the golden moths and she didn’t even like wall paper until she saw them and immediately fell in love and the cut glass door handles and walls of pink plaster and the vintage ceiling lamp from a fairground in Paris a sunset every evening and a hydrangea at the front door and she thought it was the most romantic place she had ever known
She remembered how she had felt that first day the day they moved in when she got into the car refusing to look back at the woman she used to know watch her drive away from behind the glass of the top floor window
She never wanted to see her again
but this time she felt differently because she had really fallen for the woman who lived here. A woman who kept her home furnishing it simply and with care and attention adding talismans from her collections, slate from the land of her parents house, a piece of dried olive wood from her holiday to Crete, a fox skull she found in a woodland the year she broke it off with her old boyfriend. And there were her handmade figures sculpted on her own torso twisting and contorted sensual and sad and she had had aspirations of making a herb garden in the court yard and baking her own bread eating it warm with butter melting as she had done as a child
On warm days she opened the windows wide to pull the sea breeze through and later in the year when she felt a chill she asked her husband to light the fire and her cheeks flushed as she watched him chop the kindling this woman loved the sky and the sun on the horizon and the rain on the roof windows rattling in the wind and she loved the woman she had become
She entertained guests and dreamt long vivid dreams that she was at a party in a town she remembered from somewhere a long time ago and she returned there each night and she was beautiful and thin and laughing and she wore long silk dresses which flowed and rippled as she danced and pushed through crowds and climbed onto rooftops in the moonlight. The straps slipping from her shoulder revealing her breasts and her husband was there and her son both glowing with light and
occasionally she caught eyes with her old boyfriend who was watching them from a car outside
She chose a wine for their final evening and put it on ice so it was cool and crisp ready for when her husband finished work.
He didn’t finish work however and so she served him supper at his desk while she ate with their son in front of the television.
Earlier her husband had said they should make love to mark the occasion and she felt panic rise in her belly. How could she use her body like that when she didn’t feel like she was even inside herself and all she wanted was to lie in darkness and mourn
She had put their son to bed and once his breath was deep and steady she rose again to be with her husband. He lay naked on the bed stripped of its covers and draped in blankets. His body glowing and beautiful in the light of a single candle. She undressed and climbed on top of him and as they kissed he entered her and she forgot everything
But she remembered who she was again that she was not her body and she was not the house and she was not the boxes piled in the hallway ready to be transported to another house and another life she was not any of these things but that she was in the scent of the jasmine and the rain on the skylight and she was the gold in the moths
Things deteriorated quickly.
Dust gathered along the top of picture frames and skirting boards and the water shut off in the bathroom taps. The ceiling peeled and the cracks widened and crumbled in places and a pear browned beneath the sofa
The insects swarmed fruit flies and blue bottles. Their incessant buzzing driving her to madness.
Somebody needs to take the bin out she thought and wondered how many days before her husband’s return from his trip.
Cats on the counter hungry licking the butter knife, crumbs and grease. She didn’t see it coming but it was too late to do anything about it
Her clothes
She could tell she had been wearing them for what must have been days at least because the material was soft and shapeless and smelled of body and sweat
The plates piled high and discarded food rots maggots wriggling. She scalded them with boiled water from the kettle and watched their movement still
All that was left now was detritus and she swept it into piles
a clothes moth scrambled from her collar leaving a trail of dusty scales and she thinks of the wall paper and smiles back to the woman in the mirror
She thought about the new people and felt resentful and that made her dislike herself and that made her dislike them
Whoever they were