watch this: the dead girl (an experiment or prose exercise)

We found her down by the ravine. We warned her about blue cars and strangers, but she was young, hopeful and determined, and clutched an oversized stuffed rabbit as if it were an appendage. Her face was a mess of pain. Love me, love me, love, she incanted. Rabbits. Dead rabbits. Children. Hair like twine tangled in a cheap charm, the word “taken” in script. 12:13, Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister. Was that your mother’s blood on your hands when you left in the gloaming with a suitcase and a faded photograph? We hoard our pictures, terrific memories of our former selves. Why is it, I wonder, that we only want our picture taken when we’re happy? Let the plague come like swallows. Keep walking. Keep your mouth shut because of the swarm. They carry microphones, cameras and judgement. You might need ropes. You might need to hold me down. Conquered.

Why do all the maths compute to mother? There are three words in the English language that frighten me: mittens, murder and mother. Perhaps I will spend my life rearranging letters. Can we not talk about serial killers anymore?

Imagine peeling off the eyes of the departed and developing the iris like film, so we can see the very last thing they see. The men with the slow drawl and steady gait lift you from the grass — you are molten rock, gravel, earth and rotten. The hawks sweep and hover. Deciduous trees, free-falling sky: these are your final photographs. You have become negative. Keep your mouth shut, keep walking. We press down hard on the cuts on your hands to quell the bleeding. Invictus, are we unconquered?

We’ve no tourniquet! We’ve no stations of the cross! Rather we are blood-letters, gossips, body-cutters, philosophers, and mourners. Women who wipe the make-up off. On a subway there is a sign which reads, how to become human in six million steps. When asked, Virginia Woolf supposed that upon death, we return to that place from which we’ve come. Lift me up like paper and tangle me in branches, tie me in gold chains, string me up in dead trees. Angel. A man took a girl and did horrible things to her.

What have I become?

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 7:59 am and is filed under daily murmurs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.