3rd November 2016
She was alive.
It came as a surprise. More an instinct than a thought.
One eye opened, and another. She saw nothing. But there was breath. The wrists were pulsing and the fingers moving.
Upright, she sat. Bolt, sparked, Frankensteinesque. In the darkness, she raised arms to feel the air, to locate bearings. Somehow, her legs folded beneath her, toes pushing up the hind quarters until she was kneeling. Her arms reached forward and touched earth. Wet earth. Grass, was it? And she crawled, unseeing but breathing, hands and toes in the damp grass. Yes, it was grass. The roaring appeared now, or, at least, she’d just become conscious of it. The ocean? The wind? A car? It was hard to pin down. Her head was like a starry night, expansive, ungraspable, ungathered, spotted. But a small light, orange, a moving dot in the distance, lifted her into a stumble, and then a stagger. She must go the other way, the other way, away from the light and sound, and she turned from it and marched towards the darkness – she thought she was marching, but was it was more a slow trudge through water. Cold air. She touched her torso, brushed bare arms. Oh – she was naked. Her hands covered her chest and she waded through the damp, drifting.
J March 