No One Remembers Weak Women Unless as a Bad Aftertaste Except their Children by Ethel Rohan
Fact:
She is krazy-glued to a husband, house, and three children. Whenever anyone asks anything about her life she wants to say killing. How, oh how, her hungry mouth hanging open, does she long to say just that. She doesn’t know exactly how she does respond, and doubts anyone else remembers either.
Fiction:
She admits I can’t breathe, and sees about some air.
Fact:
Frozen, starved, hollow, she wills some catalyst to smash and unglue her, to set her free: she imagines she returns to her house, into its choking air and rotting smell, places her bags of groceries on the kitchen table and, drawn by the foreign noises, creeps upstairs to find her husband in bed with another woman, their pungent juices staining her sheets.
There are also the fantasies about death: her own, her husband’s, her parents’. She goes so far as to picture her children’s three white coffins, filling with a hardness that rocks her, that is all too fleeting. How well she will wear grief, regal in black, in mourning, in her metamorphosis. The more crushing the crisis the higher she will rise, basking in people’s sympathy-soaked adoration.
Next the new beginning: an island tinged with the smell of saffron and feel of orange, populated by a people always smiling, clapping, singing, and dancing. A place where the air caresses her and ground feels solid under her feet. Where it is never night. Where no one needs her. Where she misses no one.
Fiction:
She finds one dirty sock too many on the floor, and walks. Into a space where she can just be.
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Raised in Ireland, Ethel Rohan now lives in San Francisco. Despite the much sunnier climate, she remains as pale as the day she was born. She writes and publishes, and blogs at www.straightfromtheheartinmyhip.blogspot.com
© 2009, Metazen. All rights reserved.
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You see, the space where she can just be is an illusion of the highest order. She can never just be. That place does not exist. It will always be tethered to the room with the dirty sock.
scaaaaary! brilliant structure and lines to behold: “an island tinged with the smell of saffron and feel of orange, populated by a people always smiling, clapping, singing, and dancing.” great piece thank you!
love this…thanks for sharing…honestly