Duplicity

There I go, on my circuitous way through the mazes of your heart. Blame it on a broken compass, half for you and half for you. God knows what treasures you have amassed, jealously hoarded, over the years. I will have to borrow my wits from him then, for mine own are but melting snowflakes of awareness as I make my way untoward the heart.
You are my murderous sister and you manipulate me as though I were a paper doll you could tear out, fold up, refashion again. Reclaim in triumph. Oh dear, I've said too much. You have slipped into woe. A fool and her favour. If I am not careful I shall end up like Aunt Goliath, with her mouth all sewn up in crimson velvet thread. too bad.
I was born with a twin heart, half for you and half for you.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele

Legacy

I have cut a thousand paper hearts from the letters and journals I have found around the house. So much for my sleet relations and their flinty ways. I shall string this bunting over every archway and architrave. The narrative of placid blame that I have hoarded over the years will now be made available for all to read. Disjointed, random and manipulated as it is. So. Just so. Just so I can die blessed.
Do you read me Uncle? Ah well, the truth is a cunning mistress, flashing her torn paper fan at us. Catch her if you can. She takes the circuitous routes through this house of envy. Thus she trails the velvet curtains behind her. Don't trip.
Where now Uncle? She takes us out and down the wide drive, back to the river-front. Down to the broken steps of the River Not. Get in, she gestures to us, and I cannot help but look at you. She has a small blue boat, with the name Triumph painted on in red. Its sails, why look? They're rigged with that selfsame bunting you were reading back at the house. All the little hearts tearing in the sudden squall.
My heart is a bruise. I put my fingers to your lips, Uncle. Don't say it. Don't say it now. Or she'll have you, this wintry queen of truth. Your mouth will erupt in blisters. Ssh uncle. We are out on the placid river after all. Blessed as sleet. Here let me unfurl the bunting for you. Are you sitting comfortably? then let me begin time's tender story of history melting into now.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele

Long Life Fairy

The long-life fairy drops in from beyond the horizon, in all the popsicle colours of the sunrise. From the Adulterer's Songbook she chooses two anthems: Longevity and Happiness and plays their notes, their different moods, upon her harp. Longevity: one clear descant stretching into the distance; Happiness a swarm-song of sounds in my chest. As though you had moved your head on the pillow, or had stood before me transformed by tragedy and lust. And the afterburn I feel, of sharp mouths munching through my hair.
She blesses us with many beautiful years. The words fall from her mouth like fish, like mackerel, dark and bright together. She trails a fairytale of woe in her fishnets. A magpie is caught, hanging upside down amongst the glitter. The harmonica, her true harp, releases its Once-Upon-A Time cadence of lament.
Each thing smells sweet and full of meaning: Your hip against the windowlight (it is Friday, it must be fellatio) There are no days of the week beginning with C I complain. And you tell me, complaining is to say you want the opposite of what you have. It seems a casually puzzling remark, but the long-life fairy snaps shut her Songbook and coughs up the word wife, like phlegm. I fold myself in two, like a paper heart and think I see her ghost flicker in the thundery dark, but maybe it was just the long-life fairy leaving, tossing her starry tiara our way, crumpling the air with her vibration.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele

Electra Dreams of the Last Day

One day remains. Odd as a child in a foxed mirror, Electra rides towards the ruined church. Like kisses on a glass page tossed promises and curses stream behind her, leaving a trail of handmade offerings. She is coming to the wedding of the Bride-with-the-Deceitful-Mouth, knowing that whatever is yet to be wrecked will be wrecked in the way of all flesh. For doesn't everything always, even in this marriage proposal, still so exciting, feel the urge to be something else. She has gathered up the scattered remains of our culture: a plastic doll's head, frost ferns on a window pane, curiously intact Victoriana, a knife with its chipped blade. As pitiless and as unflinching as a God, she rides upon her frost lion, trying to tempt the hidden husband from his den. The crescent moon hangs above her shining like hammered tin, a green mouth turning pink, all in reverse. A mystery and a sudden shower of light. One tear streams backwards up her face. Turning the palm of her hand she maps a series of glorious exits and entrances: lifelines; lovelines. The bride opens the door of herself and lets her love to be pass through her, Electra stumbles in with her gifts from the bay, and the improbable husband arrives a moment too late, like a retold joke, and goes to her, with his ring, since he knows no better.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele

Rafael Finds Unexpected Opulence

Early evening come in the blink of an eye, as the sun passes over Rafael's shoulder and illuminates the map. There'll be treasure here, he knows it. Incomings and outgoings, losses and gains. The ltitle latch on the gate clicks shut behind him. How much change will he see, when he shoulders open the door to this cottage on the cliffs he calls his castle? He has returned, as he knew he must, knowing all manner of love and its cargo of grief. He has heard that a broken heart is an open heart.
When he enters the house, there she is, at the kitchen table. What price his soul? She is reading from one of the books, turning its yellow pages in the sun's borrowed gold. Under her breath she is calculating his heart's ransom. All these things he thought he could not live without. He is acutely aware of the cliff edge behind him, through the open door. Don't bet more than you can afford to lose, his brain-chatter warns him. Have you a penny to pay the ferry? When the time comes to count the cost will you still be arguing about who found this fortune or will you cease to care. A cacophony, or a symphony in his head. Or perhaps just the brass section warming up. When the pounds aren't taking care of themselves he is in a state of febrile excitement. He has come to get what he wanted and something else he didn't expect. A jar of pickled onions on the window ledge glows like a jar of captured moons.
At last she looks at him and all the questions subside. He had wondered what she'd make of him, when she saw him with his broken fingernails and his crock of fool's gold. And now, before her, he sees she loves him, simply, broken as he is. She has the coins to redeem all his sins.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele

It Begins

It begins with all the perfumes that pass for summer in his more peaceful years: diesel rising off the roads, figs going over in their bowl, synthetic coconut from my warm skin. In the garden the upturned bowls of the peonies fill with rain, which falls with the necessary urgency. From my vantage point in the treehouse I watch how under the wide dark sky the garden forms itself into a bowl of light. From his chair on the porch he can hear me pulling the great powerful note from the Tibetan singing bowl until the Gods are thoroughly summoned and all world is choir. Rapture, rather.
I suppose we'd sometimes argue. In the operatic way. But I cannot recall what we said. Our words fall still among the other sounds. He wears a little silver bell so that wherever he is in his dark hours, I can find him. We keep inventing precious times together. Behind him, on the white shelf are three shiny black bowls each with a silver sign - the name of a God, the breath  of creation, a widow's prayer. We are not permitted to touch these bowls. We must pass them by, he says, dipping his fingers int the water. And as soon as he is gone indoors, I do, touch each of them in quick succession. And just this once, the familiar world averts its gaze and will not notice. And this is how it begins.

So Green

So green it was cast aside, thrown to some minor tilt in the wind's inflection. Though they searched the forest lines, those young girls walking in an afternoon light, it was not to be found, maybe never to be found again. So green, it tucked itself among the small pears of your unripe dream, shivered in the frostbitten air. The young girls breathed out their souls, cold and radiant, clouds of broken longitude. But even there, it could not be found.
So green, its marks were antique, though they looked freshly made, a bit smudged perhaps, like the rain-merged message-in-a-bottle sea stained script of your love letters to me. The message illegible now, something starry-blurry, something wept over. So green the distance from it to us is as natural as the distance between my writs and my thumb. Imagine that! That what we longed for was there all along, at our fingertips. Something in my heart steps on a trip wire, a line so teetering green it feels like a line drawn freehand by a considerate child, a thumb in her rosy mouth. The wire dips in the Methodist wind. A pear falls from its branch with a soft thud. My brow is mapped with the lines of latitude and longing that characterise what I will do for you and how far I will go.
At this my mother's soul flies in through a tear in the atmosphere. Chagall turns over in his bed. blink if you believe me. The forest is standing in green italic against the horizon. So green, if love is still beating her soft drum let's invite her in.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele