Things I Thought I Knew by Kathryn White

Author:Kathryn White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Things I Thought I Knew
ISBN: 9781614230687
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Published: 2011-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

ON LILY TRIES TO KISS GARTH; THERE’LL BE NONE OF THAT; HER SPIRITUS MUNDI, A RAVEN GORGED; ADAM VISITS LILY, BRINGS HIS CHAIR

I am getting better. The matrons tease me. The anorexic girls spit little words of hunger. My fat friend holds my hand in her sweaty palm and lays her head upon my shoulder. She says she will die a virgin (she won’t). The manics dance around me, the depressives cry, the paranoids yell, Spy, Spy, FBI, when Garth walks into the garden with its paths and borders and a hedge. We all watch him approach and one day, when he and I are left alone for a minute, I try to kiss him. With a strong hand he averts my lips; lifts my neck up, kisses me under my chin line, then moves my forehead down and kisses me there. I melt softly into him, my shoulders relaxing as I stretch out.

So

As the days pass I start to null. The morning is just a morning, there are no great glorious moments of dawn (no glory be to god for dappled things), streamed with incandescent light from above. There are no twittering birds that flit and flack through the air, seeds dropped and trees sprouted, dainty ferns of leaves that unfurl. No ants that scuttle for the dense shelter of soil, worms wriggling away with no heads. The day is just a day; there are no clouds that arrive unannounced, buffeting in the peony of the heavens, handfuls of cushion, giant dapples cast upon hills. There is no dispersed light of dusk; no horses that raise their head for the glorious sound of gallop that fills their hearts to be free, the need to stretch, to rear, to run, to pound hooves into land, tails that fly, manes that whip, nostrils that flare. There’ll be none of that.

But

There will be breakfast – simple eggs on toast, smeared with butter, covered in salt; there will be a house, there will be people, there will be conversation that is quieter, one voice not five, there will be Dr Jasmine. Why are you so pale and wan? There will be lunch, meat and salad and dessert bland. There will be sleep – glorious uninterrupted sleep where all you have to do is put your head down, close your eyes and wait, the solipsism of my self finally alone, the pain receding, comfortably numb. There will be peace, a treaty, a holiday.

The doctors are happy with my progress, the lightening of my stony sleep. We reflect on my delusions, my inappropriate fear of the country falling apart; we nod and agree that it was my centre that could not hold.

Still

I have thoughts that no one, no book can answer; no one and no book to ask. My internal response system has died. No delicious unravelling of the light, the signposts of solutions that I had almost taken for granted, almost not appreciated. I cannot shake what I have seen – my past is made and I decide to set it in stone, to grant it the status of reality.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.