Hands hold the wind hang oranges and pears peaches and lemons. Rub the fruit o’er my cheeks and squeeze the juice. I walk on scattered cherries. Listen to them squish. They won’t hear. Hitting each other. I know what is here. The yellow gorse, the mossy rock. The dirt and small stones washed between the twist of roots. The sturdy lateral trunks of hands. Catch me. They stand on the bank below. Stars hide behind moving fingers. The moon stolen away. Hands chatter. Words fingered in the air. I want to be burrowed safely like rabbit or badger not perched beadily like owl. I found my father. Torn. His bloodied nose, pulled hair, blackened eyes, cut clothes and ragged. Barefoot, he is easily thrown. I watch the fight. There is no winner. A hand releases a coronation of peaches. I reach out. Why did you leave? Why didn’t you stay? Why don’t you stay now? Don’t you care for y’ own daughter, for me, Ambu? Answer me! He punches, he staggers, he kicks out, he grabs, tackles. His head hit from side to side. Hard. It is as though it is my head he beats. Stop! Please, stop. Who was that? He has heard me. He stands, arms held in his hands. The hands that held me now wag in the shouts of the wind. Their fingers are bare. The stars pattern a spotlight upon me. The fingers slip, fruit bruises as if falls. I melt warmed in the cocktail of fruited colour that covers the carpeted vale. Like beetle, I scurry to and fro. Nibble the orange yellows, purple green and reds. My eyes close. I picture my ma asleep, lush strands of ash blonde hair cover her bare shoulder. I snuggle up to the warm of her back. She murmurs as I kiss her fleshy side goodnight. I float on the murky water. I am overtaken by swimmers. We dive into pitch dark. We pass a shoal of silverfish worrying their way like lost sheep. I shimmer my gills against the knobbly twisting tramlines rooted along the bank. Eyes blink out from every crevice absorbed by each world that passed by. Some are shaped like snakes and wind their way from branch to branch. Watch out! I tumble. I open my eyes. I am in a box. I am alone with blue skirts swiftly passing, occasionally stopping. I am cold, hungry, wet and tired. I want ma to be here. There are tubes in my mouth. They follow their way to my lungs and stomach. It is hard to breathe. There are more tubes. On the lower end of my back and into my arm. There is cold metal resting on my heart. He picked me up and held me. Drugged as I was. That was the only time. I am back in the forest. He must have found me. Carried me here. A wilt of leaved hands lisp and shadow sunken slats of rock. There are words, names and numbers. Crow caws, perched on the head of a lover entwined with another. I read the words etched into the granite. My mother showed me how. ‘In loving memory.’ ‘Forever remembered.’ ‘Lost but not forgotten.’ I have been left and forgotten. I hate him for leaving me. A flowering fountain washes a lilied pool. On the jagged and crumbling steps an array of falling hands overhang from which the form of the four sisters of myself descend. Upon their delicate bodies rests the burden of my father wrapped tight in the whiteness of his shroud. The sisters climb the forbidden steps into the thick ethereal mists of my mind. In front stands the smallest. Her flowing hair hides salty tears. Darkened shades of cloth reveal her petit and slender. Barefoot, her small feet struggle over the broken glass. Behind stands summer. As she sings her ballad of our love, her confident smile illuminates her beauty. Standing adjacent grows a flame burning red. A feisty ball of heat engulfing a tempest of adventure. Behind them all stands the most important. Her pale form exudes an erect firmness as she touches and reassures my dead father. My heart jumps a beat as her sudden movements move her centre-stage and bring to bear the foretelling of the wise. As the midnight bell tolls, an unseen viper hidden in the guts of my father coils its dark thoughts. The icy flesh of the glassy body begins to crack and dissolve. In its place appear a cast of hawks whose wings swiftly spread encompassing the stricken sisters. The birds swoop, peck and ravage. Leaps of delight above one another, piercing shrieks at their conquest. The four sisters of myself tumble down the fading steps where there stood Ma calling me into the now bitter wind. As I motion towards her the calmness of my father’s voice fills me. “Ambu, I want you to know, I want to know you. I will always keep faith, I am with you everyday. It is pain not to see your smiling eyes, nor hear a chuckle or cry. Not to have your handheld grip nor touch your soft hair. I must grow up and face up I cannot always have my own way. Let me share in the courage you are showing and forge in faith our day to come. I will always be here for you wherever I am.” I kneel down to pick a stone and throw it through the green hands into the fountain pool. I hear it splash and run towards Ma’s outstretched arms squishing the cherries under my feet.
‘That Grand Conversation Was Under A Rose’
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