A Confesssion

I have not until today felt the need to tell my story.  There are no happy endings here.  In fact it may be that because you are reading this I am dead.  Dead.  There is no more.  And all of the things that I have done have ceased to matter.  I am the last you see.   The last chapter in the story is my own.    I have no expectation of forgiveness.  I ask only that you hear me and what it is I must tell you before I go. 

The house is quiet around me.  I am well and truly alone.  This house is as much a part of my story as the characters in it.  It has been my torment and my delight,  my refuge and my prison,  my guardian and my jailer.   I hate to imagine it when I’m gone.  It offers me no comfort to think of others climbing the stairs, looking from the windows, hiding in the attics. I want it inhabited by ghosts;  all of us dancing in the halls as if no time has passed at all.  As if it were all just a dream. 

  I was born a murderess and became an orphan.  I never knew my father though I lived with him the whole of his life.  He could never forgive me you see.  And I often wonder had he been given the choice would he have had ripped me from her piece by piece if it meant saving her. 

I am told she was beautiful.  There is a photograph in the hall of a rather sombre looking girl whose countenance was saved by a pair of arresting eyes.  Poets have basked in the depths of eyes like hers. Large and most certainly on the verge of tears that would remain unshed.  Neither brown nor grey nor green but some combination of the three, changing with her moods and surroundings, her eyes spoke volumes.    Had the eyes been slightly smaller in size or perhaps more brown than green she would have become unremarkable.  It is amazing how closely linked the measurement of beauty is to ugliness.  Millimetres really.   Perhaps if I had followed in her footsteps and been born a beauty everything would have turned out differently.  Perhaps, if only...it seems I have been uttering those words my entire life.  Sometimes I wonder, had she lived, what she would have thought of her little daughter.   Would she have loved her unconditionally as mothers do or would she, as time drifted by, become less and less enamoured until one day she just forgot her altogether.  I hope not.  It would be nice to think that she would have loved me.  That someone would have.  I am sounding maudlin.  I despise myself when I slip into such a state.  It is unbecoming. 

It seems that I must go back.  Back to the beginning if you are to understand my story. 

The Beginning of Goodbye

September

The first blush over, she is tired

Beautiful in her fatigue

There is wisdom in her golden branches and faded blooms

A beauty fleeting and unequaled

Not empty promises based on

False perceptions

But a homecoming of quietness

A winding down

A slowing of the clock

Precious

Precarious

The beginning of good-bye

The Other One

I'm working on a story about sibling rivalry, ghosts in the attic and revenge.  Sometimes it gets confused with another book that's been in my head for awhile.  Both contains elements of sisters, the strange bond that they share and the elements of competition and jealousy that are at the root of all female relationships.    I asked myself what lengths the sisters in these stories would go to to get what they wanted.
In one story it is unrequited love that drives the wedge between the girls, although the man that wields the sword is not a lover at all but the girls own father. It speaks to the desire we all have to be seen, to have our existence validated; to be the favourite and to the cruelty of a disinterested parent.
In the other story  the sisters are twins. A tragedy brings about a circumstance which leaves one sister with a burden of tremendous guilt and the other a perpetual child hidden from polite society.  What would happen, I thought, if somehow she were to take her sister's place.  Would the ultimate revenge be to reverse the roles?
As I have mentioned I sketch out my ideas in freeverse.  I find it's the quickest way for me to get the just of the story down without doing the outline.  Here are two versions of 'The Other One'.

The Other One

I have a sister

Who is hidden away

In that room

The one with the lock

And the rusty hinge

She is so small in her mind

Her reasoning is unreachable

She plays with dolls and reads story books

Dresses up in pretty things and

Never sees the sun for more than an hour

She is the skeleton in the closet

The ghost in the mirror and the elf that moves your treasures

And plays a game of hide and seek – cat and mouse-

But she isn’t angry....is she?

The Other One continued

The other one is singing

A nameless tune

It dances through the stairway

And floats into the room

Do you hear it?

The other one watches  from a secret place

and picks the lock while you’re sleeping

to steal a look or two

she is lost or given up for dead

a ghost that can’t be seen

a blemish

an aberration

a twisted trunk in a stunted tree

she waits

and then by chance she walks about

a shadow

 no longer content to grow

in the darkness

she hides in plain sight

The tunes begins

But who is doing the singing?

From the Book of Beginnings

The Confession (unedited)

I have not until today felt the need to tell my story.  There are no happy endings here.  In fact it may be that because you are reading this I am dead.  Dead.  There is no more.  And all of the things that I have done have ceased to matter.  I am the last you see.   The last chapter in the story is my own.    I have no expectation of forgiveness.  I ask only that you hear me and what it is I must tell you before I go. 

The house is quiet around me.  I am well and truly alone.  This house is as much a part of my story as the characters in it.  It has been my torment and my delight.  My refuge and my prison.  My guardian and my jailer.   I hate to imagine it when I’m gone.  It offers me no comfort to think of others climbing the stairs, looking from the windows, hiding in the attics. I want it inhabited by ghosts.  All of us dancing in the halls as if no time has passed at all.  As if it were all just a dream. 

  I was born a murderess and became an orphan.  I never knew my father though I lived with him the whole of his life.  He could never forgive me you and I have often wondered,  had he been given the choice would he have had ripped me from her piece by piece if it meant saving her. 

I am told she was beautiful.  There is a photograph in the hall of a rather sombre looking girl whose countenance was saved by a pair of arresting eyes.  Poets have basked in the depths of eyes like hers. Large and most certainly on the verge of tears that would remain unshed.  Neither brown nor grey nor green but some combination of the three, changing with her moods and surroundings, her eyes spoke volumes.    Had the eyes been slightly smaller in size or perhaps more brown than green she would have become unremarkable.  It is amazing how closely linked the measurement of beauty is to ugliness.  Millimetres really.   Perhaps if I had followed in her footsteps and been born a beauty everything would have turned out differently.  Perhaps, if only...it seems I have been uttering those words the whole of my life.  Sometimes I wonder ,if she had lived, what she would have thought of her little daughter.   Would she have loved her unconditionally as mothers do or would she, as time drifted by, become less and less enamoured until one day she just forgot her altogether.  I hope not.  It would be nice to think that she would have loved me.  That someone would have.  I am sounding maudlin.  I despise myself when I slip into such a state.  It is unbecoming. 

It seems that I must go back.  Back to the beginning if you are to understand my story. 

Odette

A spectre

Moves with grace transparent

Hovers over gravity

Dressed in hopeful longing

Rouged and powdered

To hide the flaws

Don’t come too close

This fleeting apparition dies

With every coda

Then lingers

A wraith entwined

In momentary romance

A sad refrain

Beneath the lights

The roses fall

A Candy Coated Ruse (poems in under a minute)

A watcher unobserved

Relies

On sudden subterfuge

A hidden notion

Plain to see

A candy coated ruse

Invisible it seems

To be

So snide and unrelenting

A perfect camouflage of lies

A secret so unbending

Return to Sender (poems in under a minute)

Inconsequential

though it seems

a word or two

well placed

wreaks havoc

on a trusting mind.

Sudden doubt.

Misaligned.

Equilibrium unbalanced.

Spell it out

so I can see

what you’re letter

said to me.

poised on words unspoken

Again she hovers

Not quite present

Poised on words

Unspoken

For fear of recrimination

Or something like it

She waits on a cure

A call to action

A citation

Or license to speak

Pregnant the air blooms

A storm cloud within these walls

An infinite shadow

Blocking out the sun

High on Letters

words

passed back and forth between us

and inhaled

high on letters

giddy with responses

paranoid with the meaning of it all

take it in

let it out

breathe

these words

magnificent in their sincerity

laid raw with something uttered

once before

another time

another body

a different place

in close proximity

to what it is

and what it was

not the same but

never changing

just words

hanging in the air between us

The Other One

When I write I often conceive my ideas for stories in the form of a poem first.  This is an excerpt from The Other One.

I’m afraid I am not myself, she said

In a voice not quite her own

Did you happen to see what happened to me

The moment she left me alone

I thought that I saw her

Hide under the stairs

But then again told myself no

Is it possible that I’ve been caught unawares

In a lie that was never my own

Please let me know if you see her

The me she pretended to be

The me that was also a child

Before I could set myself free