Blue Dress Hot Mess

The world is so beautiful and so wide.

And yet I am on the edge of Nothing with my dog, who is so hot on our after-lunch walk that he runs ahead of me and sits panting, waiting for me to catch up. I have lemon juice in my already-blonde hair to make it go blonder. The streaks it will leave are the only lightness of my summer, which stretches like a dark, dark, unending thunder cloud in front of me – even though it’s the last day of June and I have months of it ahead.

Nothing feels like a stifling warm hug, or like the steam off the top of a cup of tea. I have no job. I cannot, cannot get one. Believe me, I have tried. My mother rings me after my last rejection; tells me to Keep Writing. (It is like Keep Calm and Carry On). For once, it provides no consolation. Writing is the one thing I cannot stop doing. The one thing I will continue to do forever, even in all this darkness – all this heat – all this lapping shade on the shore of July. Nothing at least in involves words. That, I am grateful for.

(The canal boat is called ‘Chuckles’. Ironic, I feel far from chuckling. In fact, I feel far from this reality: 11 fluffy ducklings; harvesting already; navy-bright corduroy flares. (The last is a canal boat owner; he must still live in the 70s; perhaps he reached his Nothing and found flares the only response, like the pot of gold at the end of his rainbow. I hear a voice smile and say hello. I think it comes from me, but it could have been the dog)).

I am tired of trying. So tired I want to curl like a hazelnut in its uncracked shell. I could sleep like those flower fairies in a cot of clover. I could doze in the heat and pretend I was in Africa — in Neverland — in the cold — in Narnia. Behind my closed eyes I would be somewhere else, somewhere far, far from this edge of Nothing, this dark, dark, nothingness, emptiness, space.

There aren’t even any stars up here. No moon.

But not a single part of me wants to put a step backwards, not a single part of me – no. single. part. – wants to put a toe behind a line I have already crossed. I would rather walk into this Nothing, with my lemony hair, and my black and white dog. (He mimics my jump as I leap over a thistle). In fact, I think I like this Nothing. If this Nothing is called life, then I will make the stars, the moon. One day the streaks of my lemony hair will make the sun. I will swallow the steam off the top of the tea and push through the darkness – might even bask in the shade – until — until somewhere, somehow, Something.

It is the last day in June. The breeze is a kiss, and it flutters all over my body. The dog sits and waits for me on our after-lunch walk. A single tear stings behind my eyelids. I have no job. But I have Nothing. And that, surely, is like having all the world.