Destination

 | ARRIVAL | DEPARTURE | JOURNEY | ORIGIN | DESTINATION |

She opens her eyes the day after she died.

The mattress squeaks as she rolls to face the window, feathering the midmorning light across the peeling, empanelled walls. The room, like she, is weathered and worn; it, like she, is warming and waking; it, like she, has recently had its vacancy replaced with a new ache.

She reaches down: her stomach is firm, unwounded; beneath, only a simple hunger, and the fading memory of a knot.

And yet…

She feels her chest and arms, touches her hips and thighs; she caresses her new armour, and the silk and marble sing in response… but, far from a battlecry or a song of victory, it is a lament. Each stroke is a memory, each touch a reminder, of her old flesh: raw, yet numb; heavy from her submarine seclusion.

She leaps from the bed, imagining it the source of this stain upon her new form. Fear slices through her and reties the knot in her stomach.

How can she still feel it? She had felt it slide away, heard it drop. It had been her keeper, her prison: how could any part of her miss its torment?

And now, here, it has tainted her new oasis. She feels the slamming of doors, of possibilities closing around her until, once again, she is reduced to a single path.

She runs, her skin branded with shame; her feet, with sand and dirt. She runs, without the song and mystery of night. She runs, bare and burning, driven by the siren song of her lost flesh. Its notes echo in the loss of the vacancy; they harmonise with the plaintive melody of her newness, her hubris.

Here: the trees, the swamp, the grass, the garden. Again, she stands at the end of the garden bed. Again, she steps inside.

Here: her embarrassment. She reads the lines and lies carved into her: ears to heart, heart to mind, mind to vacancy. She is repulsed by its inertness, its incapacity: she will thrive and grow, full of hope and abandon; it will simply rot.

And yet…

Here: on her arm, the same brand; on her face, the same lines; on her breath, the same lies. And in her chest, the one song, the quieter voice beneath the all-consuming quiet, cast across the void between her.

She sits, and holds herself in her arms.

Here: the weight of silence and vacancy, of the betrayal of her body.

She sits, and she bears it.