Memories

First out of all the things I remember; a navy blue front door. Although I don’t completely remember it, not really. And if I try too hard to grasp the memory, it slips from my mind like a bar of wet soap.

There are freezing red quarry tiles in the kitchen. So cold on a winters morning you have to hop from one foot to the other.

My history teacher. Standing and leaning forwards, her fingers splayed out on the desk, she is telling us that hers is the generation who are excited and moved intellectually by feminism, but that still go home and do all the housework and childcare anyway. She sighs. She says it will be different, different, different for us. And I believe her.

Swigging peach schnaps from the bottle and smoking Marlborough lights, our heels clacking down the station platform in the dwindling early evening light.

The first time sex becomes something other than what it has been. A full moon shines, whispering to me through the uncurtained window. I look into a familiar pair of eyes, and hold their gaze. And all at once everything begins to spill over.

Falling from that tall tree. I don’t remember the slip, the rush of fear into my throat that I imagine would or should have happened. It is raining though, I remember that, and also very dark. I wake flat on my back amongst the shiny wet leaves and twigs. Getting soaked through.

The Bollin valley. In my mind I am still occasionally walking through the Bollin valley at night, the light of giant torches sweeping through the trees from the top of the hill, following my movements. And in the daytime when it is hot there and I am so so happy, six stern looking men are surrounding the small still lake that feeds into the river bend at the bottom of the cliffs. I am in the middle of the lake, in a long floral dress, laughing and splashing in a dinghy. One of the men is filming me. For their file I suppose. Gosh they must all be hot in that black uniform.

The red clay-like earth of the Bollin valley covers my skin and hair. I live underground, in the depths of that earth, and when I am finally pulled from there and taken away, I stand under hot running water and watch it run in rusty little streams and rivulets down my body, collecting in a muddy pool at my feet.

I emerge no longer recognisable to the man with the camera.

This post was inspired by Blue Milk’s New Farm.