Under the Snowflake, right under the discarded tea-cup in 'The Dead'
Her fingers toyed restlessly with the tea-cup, wondering if really she had stolen all of the thunder. Was it thunder? Or was it foot-tickling snow? She made that trinket sound as she placed the tea-cup, or rather, let it tip slightly to the right, into the saucer. It was a sound that reminded her of jewellery boxes, mother's necklace, a golden brooch. Perhaps with a real pearl. From a Dublin oyster.
Lightly, delicately, she touched the underside of the still warm porcelain. Were it real, she could have explained it. However, she swore that she felt, just for a second, the tiny chill of a snowflake there.
It took her back to that day, forty years ago, the untouched blanket of snow. The dog-prints. Early morning tip-toe. Under the mutton-grey sky, there she stood. So she was, she was. And now, the touch of cool ice. As fingernails on skin. When warm by that fire over there, over there, over there. And then there was the shrill porcelain smile of sound once more.
Take me with your chill lips, she pleaded. With a tremble, she clipped the tiny cup and it fell with a ready thump to the carpet. Was that a lovely joyful glimpse of snow?
posted by Molly Bloom @ 12:01 PM
6 Comments:
My dearest dear Molly, seems like we two could write one chapter, one paragraph each, and baste it together into a most delectable wheatsome treat.
Must be in the blood;: a sanguine tiff and barter.
Well, I recently found that I have Irish great grandparents. I wonder if that's the link.
...yes, yes of course yes, my great grandmother was Irish. She abandoned my granddad and his fader and recrossed the Guinness Sea.
I didn't have anything to tighten, so I'll just say, the bellybuttontightening sea.
Scrotus mendes: (tighteningcinchinglytight)
Dogsbodies and a lightly toasted Melba with ice-cold butter, pats, of course.
Poor dog gets a poke with the brairend of the ashplant.
"She laid herself flat-out on the bed so close to her husband that she could feel his warmth but not touching, and closed her eyes. Slumberous flakes of snow, silver and dark, fell over her body, Garett's body, and all the sleeping and sleepless bodies of the Hotel Boulderado. It truly was snowing everywhere. Snowflakes from stars and moons everywhere falling like comets or dust or nothing. Falling on us all. Falling upon the beautiful and the ugly, the real and the counterfeit, the living and the dead." ... from Anne Pigone's The Ugly - a paraphrase of The Dead at www.thedeadandtheugly.com
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