Awakening

Awakening (24th February, 2009, 7.21pm)

I didn’t think that it would hurt this much. Before, I could taste the scent of summer in my mouth; air laden with pollen and a strong breeze from the South as I stood there, contemplating my next move. To think I had the gall to do it at all; yes, that was the surprising bit. Releasing myself from the hesitation that has plagued me like some minor blood disorder ever since I could remember knowing how to feel, and feeling only a slight awkwardness.

Blood, yes, I can taste it in my mouth. Stiffly, I try to lift my head, but it feels as if it is stuck to the damp ground. How long has it been? If I could see the sun, I could work it out, but I can tell that the sun has gone in, as if in disgust: my only disgruntled witness.

I wish I’d waited for you. You promised you’d help, if only to pick me up when I’d done it. But then I went away and thought about it and decided that freaking you out completely might drive you away. It’s been so long since I had someone like you to talk to. I miss the others. They made me feel safe.

Stop. Before the sound of tearing metal and the squeal of rubber on tarmac haunted me yet again. Too late. I try to spit out the blood and the memory with it, but it overwhelms. I cough into the dark earth, and hear the gurgle of the lock as the river sucks at it. There is something deliberate about the ground; it is solid and reassuring, and I sniff hopefully, trying to re-inflate my winded lungs.

Voices on the other side of the river make me shiver, and I hope that I’m hidden by the undergrowth and the slope. It’s too late in the evening for many boats to be about, but a child’s shout shocks me until I realize the breeze has carried the sound.

Unbend bent limbs, as the blood begins to pound; I’m breathing a bit better now, enough to roll over onto my back, dragging myself belly-up. I can feel the swells and dents in the ground through my bony back, and my spine cracks into place as I exhale the precious earth-smell.

How do I know if I have proven myself? This is only the first attempt. What is to be my comparison, my control? My lip starts to shrink as I struggle to make my brain work again, my vision returning. My left ankle burns with the pain of mending. I wriggle my torso sideways, bend my side, try to glance down the length of my body. My foot is at an odd angle, and I might have to give it a wrench to straighten it.

How long, how long? How long had I lain in the car, that evening on the road, when the setting sun had blazed her long, sly fingers into his eyes as he gripped the wheel in whitened hands, ghostlike, the holder of fortunes greater than his own. The sound of laughter on the summer air, and twelve whole months since his face struck the windscreen, followed by a blackness deeper than anything I had ever known.

Awakening to the sound of nothing. Only one heart beating: my own. I crawled from the twisted metal, heaving myself past the shell filled with softer shells. The loneliness was overwhelming. And in the distance, the sound of a tractor harvesting. Do they still call it reaping? What on earth did we sow?

Surfacing, like rising from the depths of the river; yes, I’ve tried that way to no avail. Vertigo was my only obstruction this time, my hesitation dizzy with unfounded fear: the fear of falling when you’re about to intentionally jump. I am a living oxymoron, because, apparently, I cannot be a dead martyr.