Michele Seminara
Epistle to my PaedophileDoubtless you won’t comprehend
me writing you this way; for you are harmless now, breathing in laboured rasps, your body neutralised by the karmic stroke of luck which all the girls you might have met don’t even know they should be glad of. I was not so fortunate. I knew you when your limbs still had the power to insinuate themselves into Christmas lunch and re-calibrate the trajectory of uneventful lives. (Strange, I never thought to tell, the chest of smut beneath your bed, the dancing doll’s skirt, lifted to reveal -- Or your pudgy hands which turned like moles in the incestuous burrows of their pockets, jingling coins that lured, and repelled…) What a relief it was today to find them stilled. Pale members, no longer in the service of the perverse familial compulsion which thwarted me, as it did you. Instead, you have become the baby you once must have been: helpless (hapless?) in your cot, as I was, legs akimbo; and this is perfect, a perfect way of seeing because the unsullied space of your mute presence allows me to impute whatever version of this I want to -- from your side, recognition, remorse; from mine, forgiveness, love. But I don’t need that now. We are at peace, you and I, our transaction complete. There is no more fear. Only wonder, at how one clot of blood lodged within a flawed man’s brain can assuage so much suffering: what a wise solution, so elegant, the vessels swollen to bursting with compassion for us all -- surely that drop was placed, just so, by the delicate hand of God. SubsumedThis peace has been brokered on loss --
or rather — on sundering. Subsumed in our own crises’ wake we drift stupefied. A surge of relief at arriving at the bottom. Not striving to stay the fist, or quiet the cries. But to be still; let chaos consume itself around you; observe dreamlike destruction; close your eyes. |
StopLet's leave everything be.
Let's just stop fixing. Perhaps if we let everyone settle clarity will be revealed. Today I entered the cathedral of the bush -- sought permission to walk the land; felt it granted. Was buoyed by a chorus of cicadas ululating their adulation to the Gaia of this world. (On Facebook a slowed down recording of cicadas — oh my, what exaltation! Beyond the range of men.) As I traipse through the bush in my rag of a dress, great slobbery dog loping at my side, a dishevelled woman with hands clasped behind her back like some unhinged Confucian scholar -- a brown snake crosses my path. It's an intimate moment, as if he has been waiting for me. What does one do in such a moment? Acknowledge, pass... Let's leave everything be. Let's just stop fixing. I want to open like that naked flannel-flower to the sun. Shardhead bowed above
vengeful page on bare knees kneeling beside the bed while charged pen shrieks like words could save life razing and inside cleft chest my fish-heart left to desiccate in prayer -- please leave nothing behind The Waiting RoomHow calming and carefully constructed
this waiting room is: I'd like those flannel flowers on my wall. Classical music playing in the background, just a little too loud to hear what's being said across the hall. My daughter's in there telling how I maimed her; thwarted her from birth through lack of care. The music stops me knowing the full story — is it coming from behind that cupboard door? Everything about this room seems perfect. But at its heart bleats an old black radio. Too scared to turn down the sound and be found prying, I wait for the professional to resurrect my girl. |
