Lie in the car, stiff as a bell’s tongue, and just as mute. Pain in aspiration stage – still hoping I’ll hurl myself against walls, eager to chime.

After a blurry episode give looking another go. Burgess Park is not itself right now: tiny, lifeless, the green of grass and foliage moulded in the same garish tones. Clouds, birds, a plastic sun, tacked on a smudge of blue. We too minuscule and stuck mid-move in a scale-model some architect should have improved.

Bed, at long last. Limbs scattered like mikado sticks; palms so painful they seem large as cities. Must have crashed across the continent, one hand throbbing in Reykjavik, the other limp in the Aegean Sea. Each crumple in my sheet a mountain ridge or carved out canyon, nuzzling the gash of me. A chore to breathe.

Days shivering in sleety weather zones. I pine for hot. PEMalaise me not!

This image is a collage of two black and white photographs of a hand. The top half shows palm and slightly bent fingers horizontally, the bottom half vertically. The original was photographed in extreme light against white background, in order to achieve pronounced shadows. The latter appear more curved than the fingers themselves.

 

  • by Marion Michell

Blog and book: Sublimely Supinely

U.K.