White Resin by Audrée Wilhelmy

Author:Audrée Wilhelmy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2021-08-26T14:55:45+00:00

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A day of rain showers. The sun has barely risen through the storm.

I travel stubbled footpaths obstructed by tangles of felled stalks. To either side, dormant muddy pastures wait for flocks of uapishk. Down-pickers have cast dry grain over the fields, crows feast before the geese’s arrival. Somewhere above the Farouk River, they arrive in flocks; the wind carries their cries from afar.

I advance through the downpour and the straw, avoid the prepared ground: I cut across the stubble of the ditches dividing the fields, places where only hare and groundhogs go. My blouse, skirt, underskirt, and corsage catch on canes and weigh me down like dead bucks slung across my back. My clothes are so drenched they cling to my every move; step by step, I disencumber myself, sowing woolens and cloth behind me. Soon I am in nothing but undergarments and abandon myself completely to the cold drizzle and stalks caressing my thighs.

I love my Nunak of the spring, my Granny who scrubs away the last traces of winter.

The wind blows strong enough along the riverbanks to lay the hay flat. As far as the eye can see, nothing else exists: the downpour’s grey wall erases the very idea of houses, a church, or cows; gone too are the warehouses of feathers, the metalworks, and the Groll factories’ sombre silhouette.

I follow the din of water on water for a long time before arriving at the wide bends of the Farouk. I climb onto a bulging green, slippery rock; I think of my womb that will swell in turn and, wanting to introduce my belly to Nunak’s ardour, remove the last strata of my domestic attire.

The wind is biting and it tangles my hair; I sit down on the rock, a mossy throne, and dip my toes into the water, next my ankles and then my calves, my knees; I immerse the pink scar traced like a fat eel on my leg. I watch as the wind whisks away my undershift, then I wet my thighs and my woman’s lichen, and decide, at last, to jump.

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