The forest is death cold, damp and so choked that I am blind for more
than a few footsteps ahead. The leaf mould floor is so thick with decomposition
that I stumble dragging my legs through fungal soup. Smells of earth stink up my nostrils; sweet decay follows every
move I make. I have been lost here
all my life. Since I first crawled out of from between a trees split roots as a
newborn fool. Since she left me here longer ago than I can now remember; my
breasts stinging with our first contact.
Birds shriek
about sex and territory but I don’t listen, all I do is keep looking. I see a shadow eclipse the moonlight
and open my mouth to call her name but only butterflies come out.
She is hiding, behind a smooth trunk
of an elephant shaped beech don’t ask me how I know. I lock on, lethal fever joy flushing through my chest. I surge toward her my heart pounding as angry
pine branches tear at my clothes. Bright beads of blood jewel up my filthy skin
but keep going. In my mind’s eye I can see her, grinning with childie delight at
my approach, preparing to jump out and surprise me. Finally I am through the thicket,
cut and ruined but there, hesitating behind the tree that harbours her. I throw
my arms around it, long and loose, to feel the beat of her squeal, but only
naked bark welcomes my embrace. All that is left of her is the scent of her
skin to encourage me.
Bright and sharp is the call
of the bell; hard and smart is its sting.
She keeps the game going, lures
me on a trail in the undergrowth. Longing to fall against moss with her mouth
inside mine, I keep moving. A
spider has used one of her hairs to weave a signpost into it’s home, her clever
fingers are as deft and subtle, but I recognise every bright filament. I take off what is left of the tatters
of my shoes, to rummage deep into the sticky mud with my toes, where she stood
to signal me. The rude sounds of
the sucking wet soil help me piece together the fragments of the fading
memories.
Ours was a precarious affair, full of bitter revenge and feminine fears,
we slept in ditches, rolling among soily grass roots, opened our eyes to stare
down bruised skies at dawn. She was huge, fertile as a boar, able to ferret out
my concealed things with her curved and wicked tusks. We never had enough of
skin sliding against skin, of fragrant sticky nests under arms and between legs. She picked every flower she could find
to press between my creases, fragrant petals crushed into a rich pungent paste.
Suddenly
I hear her carelessly snap a twig somewhere to my left and my naked feet plough
the soft ground running to catch her. I pretend I will scold her now for
playing so ruthless when both of us are tired. Tired of missing the honey
whispers of hot breath into silky hair.
A badger eyes me balefully and I know why none of the woodland creatures
are disturbed by my presence, I smell like I belong to them. Why does she not
come? What am I, if I am not hers? Whose story am I in, if not a story of us? Where
else is there beside the softened mossy rocks of our copse?
Bright and sharp is the call
of the bell; hard and smart is its sting.
I lie down to beg the ground, beating the wet soil with fists and feet. “Why
me?” I call down into a rabbit
hole to her “I’ll do anything.” I choke on lungfuls of dirty air and whisper bravely
as I can, my pitch too desperate high. “I give up; you win. Come, I need you
back.”
As I crouch there in the bramble of
scrub, a wet thorn branch tangles in my hair forcing my head backwards sharply.
I moan out loudly hoping it is her come back to provoke my desire, but she is
not there. She is not coming.
Finally
tears fill the cavities of my face. I am ashamed of what I have become. I know she
will crow when she sees me crying, after all the tears she shed for me, but I
have nowhere left to look. I pull
away the last rag of what were once my clothes and enjoy the sharp acid sting
of the cold night.
She is gone; I must forget
her.
