This is an unfinished prose poem : My Mothers Dressing Table I find A blue, scuffed compact mirror - engraved with her initials. Curly script. It isnt mine. My mother lived here until she married. This table is like a diary and I creep in to read. I open the compact - it snaps its hinge open and gasps a thin cloud of stale dust. I blink and an eyelash falls against the compartment where pressed powder used to be. The edges are caked with the remnants. Orange and greasy, dry and crusted. I puff my breath at the eyelash, but still it sticks. It is the miniature irritations that drive one mad - this is probably how I got here. I press my finger tip against the lash and lift it. It curls against my fingertip. It is black and shines - dark eyes run in my mothers family like red wine into linen. I cannot take credit. More things in the kidney shaped dressing table. I push back the gathered curtains of its skirt and pull the drawers. Dead flies lie in the corners - shrivelled and crisp. There is an old breast pump - a glass funnel with a red bulb made of rubber. I smell it - it smells like plimsoll soles and pencil tops. I squeeze the bulb and remember my baby sister drinking from a bottle. (Darling child, look at your new sister and you will never forget her) There are three dolls made from clothes pegs - they are stiffly crinolined and have wigs made out of wool. Their feet are like crude ballerina points. (Hannah - take the little ladies and put them in your dollshouse; give them tea from tiny cups, make them fried eggs from daisy faces) A strange tortoise made from gilt. His eyes and shell are gaudy with ersatz sapphires and rubies. If you tap his head, he nods and nods. I could never sleep on Christmas Eve. A tin brooch shaped like a lizard - I think it was mine and fell out of a Christmas cracker. There was a paper hat, a balloon that smelled like the breast pump and there was a joke on a strip of paper. I hated crackers and feared the sparky snap of the paper strip that banged and made me cry. I always fingered it out of the cracker before I pulled. Alice hated balloons. Dear sister, I whispered to her, I hate them too. Those swollen bombs of air that hold their bangs to scare. The lizard brooch is thin and its tail is sharp. Its pin is bent and will not click into its lock. These drawers are old and screech as I open them. I find a paperweight and a letter opener. A set of kirby grips lined up on a cardboard square. I hope no one finds me looking. The years pile up like stones thrown into corners - the dressing table is empty now and I have a new name too. (Hannah, you are here to sleep. Let me fold you into sheets - let me take the dolls and powder and touch you to the night you belong to now.)
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 21:29:05 +0000
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