TO SPEAK OF THINGS

TO SPEAK OF THINGS


The day after my trip to the hospital the wind picked up. It squeezed itself through the gaps in my bedroom window. Howling at me in the darkness. I couldn’t sleep. I listened as it crackled through the trees and pushed its way over the roof. When I got up it started to rain. The drops spread themselves into streaks across the window and on the pavement below the torrent rebounded into the air.

I pressed my face against the glass. It felt cold and alien against my skin. I watched the commuters scurrying around below, heads buried deep in their jackets, leaning forward with the effort of movement. I decided not to go to work, not after my news, I couldn’t face the pretence of it. Instead I turned on the television and made some toast. It reminded me of missing school, sick with mumps or measles or something. My mother chasing me around the house with her duster, complaining about how I was making the place look untidy. What would she say now?

It made me think of Ali and how she would know what to do. I had never felt such a deep need move that way, slowly, deliberately. The feeling was primitive, rooted to the earth and the stars. A spun thread spanning the distance between us, holding us apart, if only things had been different.


I didn’t understand it. How could my body do this too me betray me like this? I tried to read the book that I’d borrowed from the library. The lists, the diagrams, the medical terms, I couldn’t hold the words in my head; they jumped around the page refusing to be still. The sentences seemed disjointed and out of place. My mind distracted by everything around me. The air I sucked in was dank and heavy in my lungs. It gave me no relief. I felt the weight of the dark sky and the rain outside, push down on my shoulders.

I tried to tell myself that everything was ok, that this was normal and lots of people get through it. This wouldn’t be unbearable. This wouldn’t be the end. This was just something to get through, something to be endured. I decided not to tell anyone, not yet, telling made it real, definite. Telling made it solid, not just between the doctors and me but out there in the real world, the world of flesh and blood. I ran through it all in my head, what the reactions would be. The, I’m so sorry, the surprised looks, the feigned sadness. I couldn’t bear the thought of it.

The book had a list of symptoms but I didn’t want to look at them. I didn’t want to make them real, manifest them in myself. I thought about the pain in my head and how it had become so bad that I wanted to run head first into the wall. I thought about how I wanted to smash everything, the plates, the television and all those things that were supposed to belong, but didn’t. I thought about what I wanted, really. Ali to be here, to hold me, to tell me that everything would be all right.

I was scared by my own hopelessness. Where did it come from? I couldn’t remember feeling like that before. It worried me; my mind was changing in ways that I couldn’t control. I tried to eat some toast, hoping it would make me feel better, but it stuck in my throat like unspoken truths. It was a bad start to the day, a damaged day.

And the rain continued, bringing rivers into the streets. The wind pressed itself against the window. The street people rushed around, coats pulled tight into them, heads lowered, buried in hats, looking as if they had something to hide.

Inside the room I locked the door and pulled the curtains tight. I sat on the floor with my knees scrunched up and head bowed. Knowing that inside me, I did have something to hide.