I know the route to the middle. It’s the simplest thing in the world. When I was small, before I was allowed go in. I would study it from my bedroom window. I would imagine it, all the paths and contours. In my head I would run, in a white silk dress and bare feet, between the hedges, straight to the centre.
Dad told me that when I turned five I would be old enough to go inside. That night before my birthday I lay wide awake. I thought my heart would beat itself out of my chest. I knew the path, but I was scared. In the dark of my room I looked out at the unmoving shape. I watched the centre and thought of it as an empty city, long abandoned from the war. It was a city only for me, for me to run through its streets and for me to lie in its shade.
Morning came and Dad led me to the entrance. He said he would wait for me, and if I was to become lost, to call out his name. The hedges towered over my head, but I remembered the path and walked right, left, right, left...
I made it. I felt my lips tighten around my teeth as I grinned at the leaf walls, motionless and tamed below the open blue sky. From the centre I could see the house, my home; it's old stone walls reaching up like fat toes. My lips were slightly parted, my neck exposed. My hand was pressed against my skin and I could feel the contours of my ribs. I squeezed the flesh gently between my thumb and fore-finger like a soft-boiled egg. I have a soft boiled egg every morning for breakfast and I thought of it sat in my eggcup waiting for me to cut it open with a knife. It didn’t say a thing; of course it didn’t, it was an egg. It didn’t howl, it didn’t whimper. It silently let me eat it, just like the day before, and the day before that. But today, for some reason today, I listened, hoping it would protest as I tapped its skull.
No comments:
Post a Comment