Veronica Foale

Author: Veronica Foale

  • Shatter

    Give me your dark and twisted. Share with me your secrets. Bare your soul and bleed before me. Paint the world with your pain. Tear open your chest and show me how it feels. Drive your hands inside the cavity and feel for your heartbeat. Is it still there?

    I don’t want to.

    Show me how you hurt. Point to the pain and we’ll see how it looks. I’ll provide you with a microscope and we can examine it together. We can paw through the blood, looking for pieces left intact. We will sort you and break you. We can put you together backwards again. You will be broken, but you will be perfect.

    Go away.

    Dredge your insides for emotion. Bite upon it, making the pain greater. Does it still hurt? What about if I poke here? Show me. Splash it across the screen for the world to read. Scream your agony, screech your grief. Make the world hurt like you hurt.

    I can’t do this.

    Share with me your pain. Let me search through your insides looking for ways to make you shatter. Let me hurt you. You’ll feel better. I promise.

  • Not Breathing

    I twist and bend and turn, trying to avoid it. My head spins and I can’t breathe; stars forming in front of my eyes. Sighing, I plop onto the ground, feet in front of me and I concentrate on my breaths. In. And. Out.

    It doesn’t help, so I haul myself to the bathroom to run the hot water. I gasp great lungfuls of steam and it eases slightly. I bite my lip and call the doctor.

    ***

    I think the best course of action is steroids, asthma puffers and a course of antibiotics.

    Okay.

    And obviously if you get worse, you need to head to the hospital.

    I nod my head but inside I’m screaming. I’ve got a baby who won’t sleep through the night and who needs me to fall asleep. I can’t afford to be this sick.

    Now, we’re going to do a tapered course of steroids. They might make you a little manic.

    Oh. Okay.

    I think: Manic? I can do manic. Hell, the energy might be nice.

    ***

    It works and I am manic, but at least I can breathe again. My fingers fly over the keyboard, faster than before. I shake and my skin feels too small for me. I want to walk and talk and do things. I want to curl up in a ball and read, but my feet won’t stop tapping and I’m sure I’ve forgotten to do something important and I should really get up and work out what it was.

    ***

    I sit and write and think about NaNoWriMo. I should join and force myself into the 50,000 word mould. I should use it as an excuse to spend my spare time writing. To call, I am working, when I’m needed elsewhere.

    It could be my escape.

    I sigh and look at my calendar, at the list of ever growing appointments. At all the days when I’ll barely have time to eat, let alone write.

    NaNoWriMo is calling me.

    But I don’t think I can commit.

  • Beautiful

    The silence is as beautiful as it is rare. After the noise of the day, to be left with only the sound of my fingers tapping on the keyboard is balm for my soul. It doesn’t happen often, this time and space of being the only one awake. It makes me cherish it all the more.

    ***

    My reading pile grows higher.

    How long since I last curled up with a book and just read?

    I don’t know.

    How long until I can find the time to do it again without feeling guilty that I’m ‘doing nothing’?

    I don’t know.

    ***

    You checking enails Mum? Mum, you checking enails?

    Yes sweetheart. I’m checking emails.

    Oh. I come check enails with you, okay?

    Okay.

    She sighs contentedly into my chest and watches my computer screen. I can’t type anymore, so I click away. Closing my laptop I snuggle her tightly, breathing in her smell.

    The moment is shattered as she pinches my arm and darts away laughing. In trouble, but not caring.

    Three more days of this. I might lose my mind.

    ***

    I take a deep breathe and step out into the chaos. The world spins around me, tugging at my hair. I stand in the middle, torn in all directions. I wade through the noise, sprites tugging at my feet demanding attention. I step on them and keep walking, pretending I don’t feel their fingernails against my ankles. They die a slow death, trodden on and cast to the chaos.

    I find an anchor line and tie myself to it. From here, I can weather the storm.

    From here, I can survive.

  • Moonlight.

    I’m escaping.

    I walk, slowly and carefully. I think about where I will place each foot, moving consciously. I tread lightly on the outside of each foot.

    I walk barefoot through the grass. Dew clings to my feet and the stars sit lightly above my head. The moon is almost full and I walk underneath it, ghostlike.

    The silence is palpable out here. Like the dark, it coats everything. I make no noise as I walk to the fenceline and stand, watching the sky. The glow from the city sits above the horizon and in the distance, a truck roars past. I hear my front door click as my partner steps outside for a cigarette.

    With that click I come back to myself and I realise how cold I am. Stepping gingerly I head back to the house.

    What were you doing?

    Nothing. Just watching.

    Oh. It’s cold out here.

    Yes. I’m going inside now.

    I love you.

    I love you too.

    The door clicks behind me and I step inside.

  • 3am

    3am and I’m awake, thinking. I’ve just come back from feeding the baby and slowly I’m defrosting, pushed up against my partner’s back. He’s too deeply asleep to push my cold away. For that I’m grateful.

    Eyes closed, I craft sentences in my head, running the words over my tongue, silently mouthing them. I play with sentence structure, feeling the words roll around my mouth like jewels.

    With concerted effort I pull myself away from my grammatical musings and set my mind to sleeping. Something inside me tells me to get up, to write this down, to sit and in the silence, write.

    Instead I pull myself deeper under the covers seeking warmth.

    Slowly sleep claims me and I dream of words. Of leaking words like water, dripping like tears.

    This is how I know I’m a writer. When I dream the words, when I spend all day thinking about how to write the mundane and make it beautiful. This is how I know.

    ***

    I’ve hit a block in my book. I need to sit and work, but instead I procrastinate. I check my stats, I press send/receive on my email, I let my mind wander away. I stand and closing my laptop, I walk away. To think of something else.

    ***

    Deeper I sink, into the fog. I push myself down into the grey damp depths and there I lay, quiet and waiting. I can almost remember what breathing feels like, here in this fog.

    I lay there; stopped.

    A touch on my leg brings me gasping to the surface again.

    Mummy! she cries and floomp, she sits on my stomach. I pull her down to me and kiss the end of her nose, breathing in the smell of her hair. Laughing, she darts away.

    I made that.

    How did I make something so beautiful?