Apricot Press

In the room it was dark and hollow and cold, the chandelier hung still like something grown and the curtains fell, voluptuous in their draped velvet. I could hear him breathing by my side, he was a loud breather, the sort of breather you could hear coming down the corridor. Respiratory issues. He held my hand, a good foot between us, at arm’s length. He wanted to hold me and he wanted his distance. The mirror on the wall before us lay still as a lake and I longed to gaze into its mournful glass because I believed it held more reality than this room, I could get lost in there, potentially. We stood like this for the portrait. I could hear him breathing and the floorboards creaking. Minute noise, an even ticking, a rhythmic passing of seconds not from a clock but from the time that passed between us: my husband, the painter and me. I tried not to swallow but of course the more I tried the more I swallowed. It became endless, saliva down the throat, saliva trickling down to mysterious canals, and then I started to imagine the stomach and its pool of saliva, collecting and – and all the while I wondered how could such stillness contain such activity? This activity of arteries and heartstrings and that organic, tenacious ticking. My own heartstrings were pulled taut and I could not bear the way they reverberated in this waiting – this anticipation echoed by my husband’s rasping breath.

*

I hold the rose between my quivering palms. I hold the red rose as it breaks apart, petals falling and resting. I hold the dying rose in my pale dry palms as the swamp-like gurgle of the river engulfs me, on this small island, in the middle of this forest. Small critters and birds holler their songs in the distance. I am the only human here and in this knowledge I feel safe. The water is warm and viscous, runs lazy and still. A film of dead things and given up seeds line the surface and I swear I can even see smoke rising – I imagine perfume, I imagine musk. I am far away from my husband here. I am far away from his incessant breath and the chandelier that hangs heavy, threatening to spill its dripping candles. I am far away from the echoing bedchambers of my existence. I am naked in a forest, unprotected as life crawls upon me, a breeding ground for ticks and ants and mosquitoes. My nails: brittle rocks. My hair: split into the veins of a leaf. I could sink and the earth would be warm. I could gestate; mingle with fossils and become something old. I brought the rose as my final souvenir. There will be men on horses looking for me, lanterns leading the way. Galloping horses, resounding, click-clacking, taking me to the dungeons, the underground dungeons, where I might as well have been born.

Photo credit: Ivan Jevtic