Elle

Standing in the rain was its own vintage of surrender, and I let my skin become intoxicated with it.

I don’t know how far I walked from the hospital, but my beating blisters held me on a bridge over the river. The crumbs of sunset had been pecked away, leaving a charcoal sketch of black clouds and white noise.

I felt haunted by home, where its narrow mahogany throat was waiting to swallow me. The empty crib would surely shriek if I entered, rattling its freshly painted bars, as if a calf sensing its own slaughter. I don’t have the strength to dismantle it.

I closed my eyes, ready to give myself to the wind. This was true freedom, I told myself, like a sailor without a dock who must travel the world, a fleck of space-dust with a tale of the cosmos to never be told. Even the rain ignored me now.

I opened my eyes. A pale blue umbrella was dangling over me, held by a grey-haired woman.

“You don’t have to be wet to be dramatic, dear,” she smiled, her face creasing like warm bark.

I let a chuckle escape my lips. “Thanks,” I replied.

“My Herman used to take me here every day, even after I couldn’t walk,” she said.

My eyes dripped to her feet, where she raised her dress to reveal a sleek metal leg.

“Not everything gets worse with age,” she winked, and I let her kidnap another chuckle.

“I hope so,” I sighed.

“It’s true,” she leaned close, “If you have a magic list…”

I leaned close too, we were like school girls whispering in front of a naughty painting.

“I make a list of all the little things that the people I love need more of,” her voice sounded like soft piano keys, “And when I feel what you feel now…  I cross one off.”

I let thoughts of mum pour into me, how she must be sitting in her pink chair, waiting for my call. And of Louise, Riley, Priya, Ben, and everyone’s private storms where none but them have sailed.

“Do you need anything painted?” I asked the woman, her eyebrows stood up like meerkats, “I think I want to start my own”.