Gut Symmetries Read Online Free Page B
Author: Jeanette Winterson
bedroom well named. In a rip of pillow and sheet I shall tear her stigmata off the mattress. Is that her imprint, faint but discernible? My radioactive hands will sense her. Whatever bits of hair and flesh she has left behind I will find and crucible her.
Give me a pot and let me turn cannibal. I will feast on her with greater delight than he. If she is his titbit then I will gourmet her. Come here and discover what it is to be spiced, racked and savoured. I will eat her slowly to make her last longer. Whatever he has done I will do. Did he eat her? Then so will I. And spit her out.
I am not seeking revenge.
I am not a vengeful woman.
I must proceed reasonably.
Where is the screwdriver? I will have every hinge off every door. There will be no privacy in the bathroom. No place to read a billet-doux with one hand. Let him shave in front of me, shit in front of me, talcum powder his armpits under my stare. I will count the hairs on his razor and the rings around his tub. I will fact-find him as though he were a rare breed of insect.
I will do all this sanely.
Give me a drill. I will bore holes in his shoes and spy on him as he walks. Eyes beneath the pavement will be watching him. While he sleeps I will trepan the back of his head and with my fingers pull out his dream of her.
I shall of course be quiet.
Where is the chalk? I shall mark out a new Berlin Wall: two feet each in the hallway, his study he can keep, and the side of the drawing room that is furthest from the window. I will give him one lighted ring of the gas oven and the kitchen cold tap. Let him eat cake. I will mark the doorways as did the Jews on Passover and pray that the Angel of Death takes the male first born. Him.
The sex bed the love bed the afternoon and night bed where I held him he held her bed the ripe rotting sly bed. Where is the saw?
First sever the headboard. Second, disembowel the mattress. Third, gut the springs. Fourth, amputate the footboard. Fifth, neatly arrange the halves at either side of the room, one dazed blanket each.
Blankets? Blankets? What has he to do with blankets? Warm enough in borrowed arms. His secret heat.
At least I am sail calm.
Her address. He must keep it somewhere.
I entered his study and began to go through his papers. What a pretty avalanche of white. I began to think of last year when we went skiing together and made love against the dunes of snow.
Look away. Who wants to salt themselves into a Lot's Wife of memory?
Above all, now, do not give way to pain.
My hands shook and the papers under them and. the study under there and the stacked up lives below shook and the newsboy on the news corner grabbed his news sheets and felt a second's agony and did not know.
Where was she? Under the carpet? Pressed between the glass and window frame? I was breathing her. Her dust, her molecules, the air was fat with her, the droppings and gatherings of a living body.
Purge the place, purge it.
I opened the windows of his study and conducted an experiment in gravity. If I drop a CD player and a lap top out of the same window at the same time which one will hit the ground first?
Let the words fall with them. Hate. Anger. Pain. I have been told that words are cheap. Words are light things that change nothing. Shuttlecock words raqueted between us. Nothing real only skill in the play.
Why did the rubber and feather words not fall? Why did they stick to my fingers? Photo frames and files I discus-hurled, watching them hold the air for a second before they dropped. I felt Olympic. I was champion of the world.
I hurled and hurled and finally stood alone in the Buddha calm of his empty room. Breathe in. Breathe out.
My fingers were sticky. Hate. Anger. Pain. The words would not fall. I was bleeding words. I went into the bathroom to try to wash them away but when I drew back my hand from the clear cold water, the words welled up again, red and liquid, danger words, broken words, the cracked vessel of
Give me a pot and let me turn cannibal. I will feast on her with greater delight than he. If she is his titbit then I will gourmet her. Come here and discover what it is to be spiced, racked and savoured. I will eat her slowly to make her last longer. Whatever he has done I will do. Did he eat her? Then so will I. And spit her out.
I am not seeking revenge.
I am not a vengeful woman.
I must proceed reasonably.
Where is the screwdriver? I will have every hinge off every door. There will be no privacy in the bathroom. No place to read a billet-doux with one hand. Let him shave in front of me, shit in front of me, talcum powder his armpits under my stare. I will count the hairs on his razor and the rings around his tub. I will fact-find him as though he were a rare breed of insect.
I will do all this sanely.
Give me a drill. I will bore holes in his shoes and spy on him as he walks. Eyes beneath the pavement will be watching him. While he sleeps I will trepan the back of his head and with my fingers pull out his dream of her.
I shall of course be quiet.
Where is the chalk? I shall mark out a new Berlin Wall: two feet each in the hallway, his study he can keep, and the side of the drawing room that is furthest from the window. I will give him one lighted ring of the gas oven and the kitchen cold tap. Let him eat cake. I will mark the doorways as did the Jews on Passover and pray that the Angel of Death takes the male first born. Him.
The sex bed the love bed the afternoon and night bed where I held him he held her bed the ripe rotting sly bed. Where is the saw?
First sever the headboard. Second, disembowel the mattress. Third, gut the springs. Fourth, amputate the footboard. Fifth, neatly arrange the halves at either side of the room, one dazed blanket each.
Blankets? Blankets? What has he to do with blankets? Warm enough in borrowed arms. His secret heat.
At least I am sail calm.
Her address. He must keep it somewhere.
I entered his study and began to go through his papers. What a pretty avalanche of white. I began to think of last year when we went skiing together and made love against the dunes of snow.
Look away. Who wants to salt themselves into a Lot's Wife of memory?
Above all, now, do not give way to pain.
My hands shook and the papers under them and. the study under there and the stacked up lives below shook and the newsboy on the news corner grabbed his news sheets and felt a second's agony and did not know.
Where was she? Under the carpet? Pressed between the glass and window frame? I was breathing her. Her dust, her molecules, the air was fat with her, the droppings and gatherings of a living body.
Purge the place, purge it.
I opened the windows of his study and conducted an experiment in gravity. If I drop a CD player and a lap top out of the same window at the same time which one will hit the ground first?
Let the words fall with them. Hate. Anger. Pain. I have been told that words are cheap. Words are light things that change nothing. Shuttlecock words raqueted between us. Nothing real only skill in the play.
Why did the rubber and feather words not fall? Why did they stick to my fingers? Photo frames and files I discus-hurled, watching them hold the air for a second before they dropped. I felt Olympic. I was champion of the world.
I hurled and hurled and finally stood alone in the Buddha calm of his empty room. Breathe in. Breathe out.
My fingers were sticky. Hate. Anger. Pain. The words would not fall. I was bleeding words. I went into the bathroom to try to wash them away but when I drew back my hand from the clear cold water, the words welled up again, red and liquid, danger words, broken words, the cracked vessel of
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