She excuses herself at the usual hour, never all so late…

 

The path is clear, the distance minor; still the moment lengthens. In descent she leaves behind her the traîne of the foothills and over the river carries herself on to her destination, but as though compelled by twin compasses her trajectory feints and ripostes. The southward lean of the city becomes a labyrinth, the boundaries she traces are known to her alone. Would she but allow herself the ease of direct passage the journey would be swift — but she cannot, will not; within her some instinct forever holds out against founded judgement, impossible to deny and better left alone. As always she returns via roundabout, carelessly, thoughtlessly…

 

Her practices sustain. By the time she has completed the traverse from the residence of Alouette to her own, midnight has long receded into silence; the bells of the church, bereft of solar purpose, hang stoic in place. This absence of temporal definition reveals that her arrival at the little side-street, then, is the usual hour as well; the courtyard allows the usual sky; hueless, lightless; the illumination of city has run off the stars but from her narrow vantage-point the incandt of horizon too has been masked.

 

The gate from the courtyard is unlatched.

 

She ascends two flights of stairs and clockwise turns into the wide hallway that provides access to her apartment and that of the neighbors who share the floor. Nothing has changed: the bulb hanging bare from a chandelier-chain, buzzing coolly; the tile beneath her feet freshly cleaned, so too the door to her neighbors’ unit; dust covers her own, an accumulation of impressions therein marking the reaches of habit. The echoes of her own fingertips, narrowing, brushlike… and, sometimes, the smaller prints, unlined, faint, fanned.

 

She remembers each point of contact, regardless of origin. But memory evades context, which will always be unclear; the specificity of when and for what belongs to the wilderness of forgetting, like the traverse back from Alouette’s, from the far side of the river, not so far, where only a moment before she bid her friend farewell and only one more such moment later — the breadth of a step — suddenly she has returned to the point of captivity. Always these movements unconscious, or close to-so, and not lingered-upon so much as lingered-through. She cannot help herself; she harbors no true affection for this space and the lack washes back reciprocal in every landing. It is not home but a necessary infliction of shelter she moves towards, or she would remain in motion through these streets through sunrise; if only exhaustion made lesser demands upon her; sleep she must, and sleep she will, but first…

 

Alouette, across the river:

 

I’m grateful for the strawberries. It’s been too long

Summers have been fragile these past few years … the frost comes early

 

No, don’t thank me — there’s no other way 

When I found them I thought of you 

Without hesitation

 

Unsettled-always, she can never escape some constants of being. She walks for hours, the hours become days; the days spool out limitlessly before her. Here and there it seems as if the accumulation of her movements will surpass the tread of time but with each pause for brief rest or contemplation the days outnumber suddenly-but-forever her footsteps, outnumber the swings of the door, and the count of her boots tapping over the pavement forever tarries even as she wills forth acceleration. Here-always is another night: it might be three o’ clock in the morning, almost six; as her door creaks open her motion slows, as all unwilling laborers find their approach entangled in the ugly imminence of toil as the curtain rises before them.

 

What is to be done? She is not above the natural order. At six o’ clock she will be free, if she can only allow herself to sway unconscious for a spell prior: this is the longstanding rule of law. Or she will collapse over the cobblestones, waking to collect her strewn and scavenged particles; or perhaps not at all. The canons she must abide by are simple enough. She is not infinite, and as much as she attempts to draw her own parameters there are some already afforded her from which she cannot abstain. The little apartment is a pacing-ground, a banal compromise with a higher force to hold off her erosion. So her mind stays in the boundaries of preservation. So her boots will not grind down into the pavement so prematurely.

 

So long, it seems, she has resided here; for more days than steps; beyond this she cannot close in on an answer. She is aware of a narrowing of amenity; in the distance, distinct over her shoulder, lies some early hope; yet with every stride and every sunset it recedes further… but why, what became of this road-not-taken, the congruence of space and being? The constriction of unfamiliar walls around a new cradle always offers at least a possibility of exactly-that, of embrace rather than strangulation — and then, the advent of additional footsteps, and more swings of the door, and the days, always and forever, more days and hours forever and ever… since such a length of passage antecedent, the threshold of this particular abode has settled into a role in which it will remain more-or-less in perpetuity.

 

Here rules aggression, here is aggression, as forever habitats have been wont to be when the role has been designated rather than welcomed, when the symbiosis is loveless; so it is for her in this little third-floor walk-up. There was no crossing without affliction this time, as there has never been prior, as there will in cruel continuance be no relief offered on those entrances that stretch onwards evermore. She remains a foreigner. From designation the hope of home was made absent; from designation of space as owned. She, who has no right to own; she, who is only a steward.

 

Must she place herself at fault? There is no other explanation. For some forgotten reason she had not welcomed the world as herself, what could have been her world, even, had she assimilated setting into being, woven the consciousness of personhood into that of the walls… for her eschewal of oneness she cannot expect to feel welcomed in return. A foreign body must be rejected, even from the womb; yes, as it is, so it must have been, her choices now lingering so imperceptibly far in a vague fog of distance as to be forever irrevocable. Outnumbering the days before her, the irreconcilable footsteps forming the path she has marked through failure recede into history.

 

She thinks upon this; awareness lingers. The expanse overwhelms with varying degrees of discretion, but always it overwhelms. And now, a discreet vibration; not so much nervous as it is weightless, untethered; stirs, preparing to awaken in the tendons of her wrists.

 

 In the afternoon:

 

Do you care to consider

Where one can find the borderline between

total lack of motion from that which technically moves, yes, 

but at such reduced velocity that …

 

She turns the conversation and does not hear the last sentence he speaks.

 

But have you ever found yourself so deathly ill 

that you were unable to move any part of your body 

except, maybe, your fingers — your thumbs ?

 

I could hardly term that illness

 

Then?

 

A failing of spirit … or nothing

No, I don’t believe … really

you mustn’t attempt to explain this, ever 

you mustn’t ever elaborate !

 

 It’s not about explanation — no, but lived experience 

Have you ever been so ill, so terribly ill, 

that you were unable to move any part of your body 

except the last joints of your thumbs ? 

Or, maybe, not even that

 

Look at me … of course not …

I’d be gone

entirely gone

Not here sitting across from you on my gold upholstered armchair

 

The only chair in your entire home —

 

The only chair in my entire home

Staring down into you lounging against the wicker basket that holds the wood 

As you … what ?

Massage your feet and stare up into me

Sipping my hot milk from the only mug in my entire home

on which “LUCKY” is printed upon the side

 

And think 

I’m still thinking you know

 

Yes

And think

Now you think as well

 

Look: like Alouette’s, in the center of the room where now she waits at the edge, there too is a singular chair. Like her hallway, here too is dust undisturbed, paler and finer than that upon the exterior entry; on the exquisite needlepoint of the seat underuse has established the capital of its dominion. These quarters draw few guests. But it cannot be so inhospitable, she tells herself, not inherently; not for those unmolested by the animosity that harries her alone. If through happenstance an émigré from the reticulated world outside were to trace her route over from concrete to courtyard to second staircase, if they were to step through the doorway without a thought, if so, then — they would, doubtlessly, arrange themselves comfortably. The chair, in its austere dignity bears a friendliness that surfaces in a mannered, effortless tone. The chair upon which she would never take a seat, but whereupon to another an invitation could be made, pause a while…

 

As they would. The mahogany carved as if it had matured to shape does not lend itself to intimidation; the intricately embroidered upholstery holds its form so far from fragility despite its age, and it must be pleasant to sit upon, bestowing over its occupant a noble posture; exalted; painless; she thinks, or assumes, recalling-or-imagining observation. Through the doorway she is able to take a flicker of comfort from the sight of the room’s keystone — its bearing is indiscriminate; even her it does not entirely shirk from acknowledging. It is a superb piece of furniture, bestowed with a certain affability. The natural affability of royalty, she thinks.

 

Because it has nothing to prove, she thinks to herself…

 

As she initiates her exit:

 

Now won’t I see you [this way again]

…

Before too long, that is

 

The repeating of space is implied, unspoken.

 

Her inertia overextends itself as the refuge of otherwises is pushed to the limit and exhausted. She can deny what is now no longer. The vibration in her wrists has in good humour waited upon the the line between perceptible and implied, has in doing so gone beyond obligation but now is making itself more apparent. She has waited long enough; there is naught to be raised up from the depression formed in further delay. She tenses the musculature of her eyelids and steps over the threshold. Into the little room.

 

From the walls of the room the air adjusts slightly; pressure shifts into a semblance of exhalation. She may be alone now in one sense; she is not unaccompanied. These walls have breath; yes, there is breathing in the walls; not wholly independently life, but a limb thereof, connected through approximation to myriad variants. For some time now she has existed as an occupant of the city: she must remember this; here she remains; in this city, this particular city, and she cannot ignore the fine threads that extend from her crown and spiral upstairs and down to entangle with those that emanate from the temples of all who grant moments to the alleyways and boulevards, and the stone benches that line each and every bridge…

 

Only now does the extent of her current deterioration reveal itself — or is it the immersion in hostile holdings, rather than amassing weariness, that drives her structure to give way? Her boots that have carried her over all-time through the labyrinth winglike twist and slide over the cluttered floor as hints of an unwelcome vertigo whisper from within. A stance of defiance can bear her no further. Near the feet of the throne there is a gap in the precious debris that overruns the room where she nests herself whilst in residence; an ignoble placement, perhaps, but what choice has she? Though nobility may require elevation, dignity does not, grace must not — she thinks to herself, as she enacts her tested choreography of survival and situates in the usual fashion, halfway to supine, focusing on the centrepiece beside and above her.

 

Like an alpine retreat, the locus of a dream, where one might have summered once, just once, long-ago, were the chance to elevate as-such afforded to them — like this stage, the chair is beautiful, just so, and surrounded in all directions by gold and brass, leather and pelage, she interlinks her eyes, blurs her vision and focuses on the spinning fragments of momentary memory. Is this tranquility? It is not here — finding the gateway between half-blinks she slips into the other world; the world-before — before what? — no, there’s no elaboration… without context or questions thereof she replaces herself in the boundaries of long-ago, here she was, perhaps, somewhere glamoured; a summer château, perhaps; in a faraway mountain range; independent and beyond the reach of centuries and centuries of history; outliving dynasty and rebellion; where the air was clear regardless of season.

 

Yes, and the heart of the memory too is clear, is it not? Even if the details blur around the edges; even if it is unclear whether it is in fact her memory.

 

But recollection or dream; within these reaches the surrounding atmosphere, in its gilded tones, brings a sense of respite. It is not congruent to the confines of her waking life to dwell on opulence; likewise within it; both in practice and aspiration her proclivities are simple enough, and surely none could find either the artifacts on-hand or her appreciation here-and-there for illumination grotesquely patrician. She takes pleasure in simple delights; she picks strawberries off the side of the street, not pomegranates…

 

Yes, but is it not pleasant, once in a while, to step into the mirage, and listen to the arpeggio of low bells, deeper in melody than those of the church across her courtyard — silver bells she skips on and over — is it not easy on the mind? Chimes on her fingers and bells on her toes. Is it not pleasant to allow a greater force to take hold of one’s trajectory? That depends… she dances, weaving through the expanse of the veranda into the wide, empty hallways; the melody echoes and a breeze, light and pure, blossoms through the pastel silks that envelope her.

 

And around her head, a wreath of little hands, akin in obscure relation to those of children, linked like daisies in a chain; gently combing their nails through the hair about her scalp, sieving tangles, massaging epochal tension; for a moment releasing her from worry, absolving her from all previous erosion and harm…

 

That was then. As she returns to the enclosure of the present the unease in her wrists likewise returns to her awareness, and in force; from the lightness of perhaps to the extremities of the nervous system the billowing rhythm now extends up and outwards. In this borderline- moment between the privately internal and the paradigmatic she loses control of her materiality: the space that she has occupied and which she now returns to is not entirely as it was but rather overtaken by an uncanny almost. What occupies the space now is not less than herself, but other; becoming in her self-perception a tangled mass of trembles; the vibrations hum into the walls, the furniture, the scattered artifacts; porcelain flakes on the edges, brass tolls; the silks knot and twist, stitching themselves into a patchwork amidst nerve and organ and suddenly-pliable, too-pliable bone…

 

The trembling relocates now or perhaps overmanifests from the wrists to the centre of her solar plexus. From here it spirals out once more, multiplying into further runners of dissolution that shoot out and feign reestablishment where the tips of her fingers ought to be. Yes, the perimeter is there; her form molds itself back into the outlined shape of a living body — her living body, hers! — but within the walls is a weaving of miscellanea, total chaos; in a spasm the vibrational decay that she overlaps consolidates its power and bursts outwards in a sudden flash of expansion. For the span of a tear the particles that define her as herself regardless of shape flinch and bolt apart in a lacerated agony; for the span of a tear…

 

Earlier, at Alouette’s:

 

When I was unwell as child my mother 

would have me sweep the length of the hall 

 

The hall ? How extravagant

 

The cup of hot milk, freshly refilled, is raised to his lips; drawing out the diversion. Now he inhales only the steam. She holds her tongue and waits until the heat seems to pain him; not so long. Alouette places the vessel on the floor near their feet, stares in shallow revelation at his singed fingertips; looks back to her expectantly…

 

The length of the hall: 

Or so it seemed: 

Length 

Then 

And there 

A different world

 

Yes

 

When I was unwell (as a child) 

Back and forth down the length of the hall 

Until my sickness was quelled 

Or forgotten I suppose

 

Well you would forget 

Wouldn’t you

 

Yes 

Now let me speak: 

If I were ever to collapse

 

Yes

 

If I were ever to collapse 

In no time at all my mother would alight beside me 

Raising me by my shoulderblades 

She’d strike every inch of my body 

With the blunt end of her feather-duster 

Her eyes would sparkle with the hint of a smile

Then back on my feet 

I’d move freely once again

 

I never had a domestic upbringing

Never know where to start on a room

Let alone the length of a hall

If only you had a feather-duster here, now 

think of what you could do to this house

It could be perfect 

Perfect in every way

 

Well 

I think your house is immaculate

 

You …

Don’t make me laugh

 

Barefoot over a field of strawberries; once; somewhere remembered, somewhere left- behind; and something agonizing draws forth for but an instant — then nothing.

 

Look: here is a movement on the windowsill, and the ambience stirs, upsetting to a minute degree the dry patina that persists in its day-to-day settlement over the sprawling mass of bygone reliquary gathered herein. Endemic to the little room, the aerosols exhale from what respiratory mechanisms mask themselves in the drywall; through all these innumerable days, the only window in the whole of the apartment has never once been opened — how could she? The hubbub of clarity, of a natural life, must remain segregated from the quietude and reeling dizziness of the recovery-state… this is the continuously-upheld rule of law. The vines that trail down from the sill and from the moulding above it where their receptacles teeter ignominiously are the only change her meagre allowances to natural anarchy have enacted on this world. The sprouts wither into being with a passion that belies hyperawareness of lifetime confinement; the pothos spreads over the stacked medallions and around the extremities of the busts and statuettes with such crippled velocity that without those monolithic uncountables, her own static passages through space and time, the crawling development of flora would appear a monument to stasis; an icon of eternity.

 

Herself unmoving, still overcome; she gazes up into a cool darkness. She sees nothing. Her trembling has subsided and structure returns to her, but through her prior lapse into porousness a heavy pass of nausea has invited itself into her form. In the place of buzzing weightlessness of scattered distortion she is beset by a novel torpour, a petroleum flow that wraps itself around her spinal cord and brushes against the internal surfaces of her skull. She offers no resistance. For these first few breaths, at least, this sensation is an incline towards her existence as-desired in the moment; a slower sort of careening; the biliousness that can lean soporific… torture is not foreign; why should she refuse the suffering that might propel her forward?

 

She focuses herself again behind the intersection of her eyes and attempts to remain steady as the room flips on its axes; the focus does not maintain. There is a movement on the windowsill…

 

From behind one of the pothos plants a lithe little arm extends.

 

 The contours are soft; grey as ash; it stretches out and beckons to her with a delicate hand.

 

She recalls the consistency of the milk in Alouette’s cup; the embryonic moments in which before it was birthed as steam into the overtone of the room; before her eyes, Alouette inhales the saccharine vapor; but preceding this… in wavering balance her memory stands over the precipice, looking down on the primordial form which overwhelms without regard; weighted and viscous as her sickness is the hot liquid. From this distance the froth seems to contain an illumination half- obscured. She leans forward for a closer look, half-knowing what is to result from this motion; the fall is soft, featherweight; preordained, perhaps. Now casein and nausea intermix and curdle one another; the clutching vice around her backbone grasps with emboldened strength and suddenly she cannot contain herself:

 

Strawberries for you 

Strawberries for you, Alouette

 

… And on such a cold winter’s day 

although it is hardly September 

This is the happiest day of my life

 

Her descent slows to stillness in the ebbing glow that washes in through the oriel. Alouette falls silent, his eyes reflecting bright upon her as he diminishes into the upholstery and the true-gold of sunset. In the breathless moment she too says nothing. Outside his home, she can hear the murmur of the streets; pedestrians speak to one another in warm, genial tones as they continue on to the potential of the twilight hours, perhaps; or back to the abundance of their dining-tables; the solace of their bedchambers… whispers of a breeze embroider the margins; an automobile skids to a halt, as it has before; as it would again, taken unwary by the acute turn of a nearby alleyway; over this stratum, distant bells peal out clear the last marker of the day and the cooing of something like a dove faintly echoes their melody; the auto starts again and continues onward. The air lulls off. The light is failing; soon she must return, but first…

 

She rises, her fingers unworking the knot of the threadbare sachet that holds the yield which she has borne; drawn with a broad grasp from serendipity and an indeterminate wayside. From the taffeta loose detritus falls, releasing a perfume of geosmin; touches of clay-rich soil, twigs, emaciated leaflets; the last offerings of summertime. A dream incubated long-enough, at once with its sensorial cortège fancied vital. Not much longer now. She moves in closer; in her hands the harvest centers; strawberries for Alouette; three exquisite strawberries; brilliant, incarnadine, perfect in every way. Still no sound on his tongue as he plucks from the setting; the expanse dilutes. What moments lay encircling are ritual in surplus; here is no need for ceremony. The expanse adjusts. Her friend bites down sharp on the barbed shell, once, twice; it crumples between his jaws and cracks in trisection; draining through his teeth. Without hesitation he reaches for another — the spines cut the corners of his mouth and blood turns the spots of milk on his lips to rose…

 

The hand of the little tenant beckons again.

 

What a life this could be, she thinks again, if only within it she were placed no-longer, but presently the sentiment is dulled; in the thick persistence of night it seems she can mark passage only through her weakening conviction. Yes, what she would give still to vacate, to find herself in a world elsewhere; still this thought dictates its own questioning and what trails behind is the creeping possibility of the worth of emancipation equated less and less to anything-at-all; what other world might bloom slips from visibility. She coughs out; a stream of off-white dust, like crushed chalk, is expelled from beneath her lungs; it arcs over the room in a languid drift and settles into the shadows before her. Her eyes hardly follow. Above her still is nothing; in her left palm a slight pain pierces her skin. Further movement commences on the periphery; from the corner of her eye she can almost catch the ash-grey hand reaching down, sweeping up into itself that what she has lost, claiming as its own her latest forfeiture… she notes absently a new lack within that defies easy understanding. My bones, she thinks, but she cannot find herself certain of this, no more than she can be of the placement of this moment; of the meaning it ought to hold, or that of which is meant to come; or the remembrance of either and all beyond.

 

Here in her left palm she holds the last of the strawberries, the strawberry which Alouette neglected to consume; that which it would seem she neglected to demand of him. She can feel it cutting into her skin, but the pain is not unbearable, not yet, perhaps never…what is to be done? Above her is nothing.

 

Still she thinks to herself, wordlessly now, still unmoving, but once:

 

If only my ribs could bend further inwards 

If only my construction was something else 

Disposed to another fragility 

A touch more in the realm of glass 

Of porcelain

 

Yes

 

If only I could snap my ribs 

If only I could snap my ribs inwards 

Break myself and piece myself back together again before […]

 

Sometime soon it could be six o’clock in the morning. Her eyes still open.