My Infernal Horror

We are 70% water. It feels like my veins are rivers and my eyes small pools; water constantly flows through me. Water has memory; mine likes to sing like sleeping sirens slaved by the sound of their own voices amongst barren skies. It’s a hall of mirrors with reflections of my biggest fears, my regrets, my grief. If I peer over the edges, I can see my faces in the translucence- a ghostly smile that sits stiffly like plastic. She takes it off and underneath my mouth trembles. My eyes look glazed over like the jellied marbles set deeply into the Cat’s Skull as it died in my arms. Life was blown out like a candle. One breath and darkness casts itself like a giant curtain at the end of a show. The lights die. The cat’s eyes died. It haunts me still in that deep water.

Deeper into the current my hand can skim the surface and pull objects out from that infernal net. The dying smell: death marks it’s catch before he reels it in; coils itself around a person. My dad smelt. Laid in that hospital bed. If the smell had a face it would be yellow. The human body smells richly nauseous when flesh begins to rot. Fear. Seeing my Dad motionless. I’d blink and he’d still be there. I’d try and blink away that he was dying he was dying he was gone he was gone but it never stopped. He was ripped out of the universe just like that. I would have gone with him. I wanted to. I dove too deep. The pain consumed me- my lungs starved of oxygen, choking on grief. I wanted to end it. I was haunted by Sadness to the brinks of insanity I wanted to jump far far far down. For a deep breath to blow out the twinkle in my eyes like the Cats, one large breath to make the chaos silent- gentle ripples in a lake of Spectres and Ghosts. “I want to go now Geoff, I’m ready to go now Geoff, I want to go now” the moans of my Grandma as she flailed in bed like a spirit possessed by affliction. She became the creature Pain reduces you to. My Grandma had died the day I cut sandwiches for her. I’m terrible at cutting bread. She died the moment I washed her hair, brushed her prideful head of hair. The day I felt pity was the day she died. She floats in my eternal lake as one of the bloated corpses.

In my Mum’s eyes I see a future without her one day. I see her white face in the lake look up at me darkly. I’ve seen it before led in Oxford hospital. The guilt in those bright blue eyes. The tears that begged themselves to fall from set opals. The smile she wore like Armour as me and my brothers started to unravel at the seams. She was so pale. Her black hair had fallen out long ago, wished away all her eyelashes too. Cancer had eaten anything human about her. All it had spared were her beautiful eyes. Thinking about loosing her submerges me in suffering beyond all I am inevitably to experience.

70% water; but I am the girl who swims in Rain like Fishes in endless Seas. Scaled in deep hues. Liquid sadness the melts through me like tides low and high.