Rain helix
Time is always now:flickers of thought ripplesdisturb an iced lake.…………………………………………………………………………………………Summer rain, one hundred percent humidity, monsoon drains overflowing with swirling brown liquid, clatters and screams of gleeful laughter. The school bus is at a standstill water lapping up over the steps rippling at our feet. I raise my knees to save my feet with their white 8 year old socks from drowning, children swim past the windows scramble up the bumper, wind rakes browned palm tree, my skin wet with the dampness of the air. Snakes slide from hidden niche to lie black and squirming on classroom floor. Evenings rife with teeming market stall spiced dishes ,small miracles of colour on green banana leaf, cat call of meandering call girl, snap of pistol fire after curfew. My mother wafts in and out of vision decked in handmade cocktail dress fashioned from silver sari. She was nothing to do with me, an elfin Queen who if I kept clearly out of sight might never return to habitual chaos. I lived in a world of Chinese phrases, trading unlikely stamp collection at the corner of the street. Across the Buket Timor the Turf Club stretched in languorous undulations, golf course trading race track to Polo field and beyond the jungle. I like Kamikaze pilot plotted sure death on crazy ponies, slipped white faced to the ground having pushed my expertise and courage to the limit, while no body noticed, no body smiled.……………………………………………………………………………………….Summer rain, grey skies in an August heat haze, children playing out of sight, an undulating French farmscape, from the distance a blank black rumble reminding me of typhoon, imminent destruction, as my scream formed soundless in an iron throat the hailstorm hit. We watched ice the size of cricket balls smash our perfectly formed red tile roof, leaving gashes as wide as you and I . Our village was declared a national disaster area 4 km wide and I wondered was I always going to appear as a natural disaster on national T.V.? That night you climbed an unsafe roof to plug the holes and I watched as lightning missed you by a hands breadth, as I lay in the dark breast feeding our small child a fireball flew from the electricity socket Tin Tin style. So we rebuilt the outside ignoring the inner tears that left us alone on separate universe, treading empty space.……………………………………………………………………………………….Trailing mind through time’s ripplesto the farthest extensions of the universewhere there is no edge.Dark matter exists in the flash of a crystalbut we don’t know,can never guess at 65% of nothing.We were the only witnessto exponential beautycolours coalesce across our pinballfantasy of endingswe rename our messages in sign languagetune our regrets to a perfect timethat echoes in waves of cold silencestays locked in cupboards of my mindas music.………………………………………………………………………………………….Summer rain, aching tiredness and all the explanations can’t explain why I have to drop heavy objects on bare feet in order to cry; it was more than a battle of wills with you it was a life or death extravaganza and writing this is set to expunge the memory reseal my brain wash you clean away down the murky sewer where you belong. I can remember the fear, it comes in the panic of raised voices where I become paralysed like a startled red deer. I can remember the beatings, mostly fierce because I wouldn’t cry, just stare into the evil of your astral witch eyes, disengage, imagine the latest horror movie, know it wasn’t happening to me. It was on the day you broke into my farm kitchen attacked me and sent my three year old daughter to hide shaking beneath her bed that I knew I had to do something. Why did no one ever do something, why were you never locked away? My small sister used to cower behind me and say, “Vic when are the social workers coming to get us?………………………………………………………………………………………..It’s too late to cryI’ve created my ownpocket universethat expands nightly.