on
3/23/2002
I need a woman with a slow poison in her system.
One who knows her antidote's recipe by heart. She's been making it so long, mixing the herbs on her kitchen stove at midday. This is the woman who lives in the little bungalow in the woods, and who only the nearest neighbors ever speak to, but who all the boys grow up watching from the woods. She takes her daily walk to the well, draws water, and throws a hesitant smile to whomever may or may not be out beyond in the wood.
This woman feels the effects of her poison. Sometimes it's in her stomach, sometimes her leg or arm. Often it clouds in the space behind her eyes, working up along the bone line of her forhead as its pain brings her to tears. She shivers in a corner, hugging her knees as the poison reaches its apex, and wishes she could dash her head against the cold grey wood.
Death makes frequent calls at her cottage, sitting at the kitchen table and having tea. She sees him as much as those alive. They talk of many things, and she feels better in a strange way after his visits. Perhaps it's the lack of his presence, perhaps it's the stories he tells her, or perhaps it's because she understand both how much and how little he works. A trail of dead grass leads to the cottage, appearing from somewhere out in the wood.
The poison has been in this woman's body as long as she remembers -- since she was a small girl, if a day. Her antidote is hard to make. Some days it doesn't even work. This is to be expected; the woman's only alchemical training has been forced by necessity. She has tried everything else, short of utter self-destruction, and found hers the only truly sustainable method of self preserving. Fantasies of lacking or losing her troubles are ones she avoids; this is the final proof of her strength and sanity -- going about her routines without the why, the how and the would.
This is a sketch of the woman I want -- one I could want. I don't want her because she could share in my depression, or delusion, or because she might retreat into her imagination as much as I always have. I desire this woman because I have a lot to accomplish before I can rest, and I don't want to be alone until that day.
Touch the Toast