Blue Dress Hot Mess

The donkey has a great big face; the Beast that is Bottom. 

I eat beurre d’escargots which it turns out is just garlic butter in an ancient style of pitta bread in the courtyard of a French abbey. (I wonder if snails ever swam in my garlic butter. I picture their shells in a colander, draining off the stinking lard and clacking as their backs bounce off each other. I realise I am sick — morbid). I watch the sky turn from thunderous purple to fluorescent pink in a blaze of weather-defying sunset. My boss texts me details of when I start work next week; something calls in my head: I have a job, whispered, chanted, on repeat. I look up, away from my thoughts. The bats are the swallows of the night, diving through the air between my head and the sky — that expanse of space which is nothing but breeze; breath. It is nameless, but it is large. It is the place where the air sings, the belly of the sky and the finger-tips of the earth, who laces her trees – stretching — reaching – to caress the sky’s out-turned stomach. The caress is soft, gentle. This place between my head and the sky is a channel of wind, perhaps. Or a ray of dawn. It does not have a name, but it expands and shrinks, depending on your location. For me, it is nameless, but it is large. It is where the bats swim, dive, play. The pool where the bats play. 

My suncream has run out. It signals the end of my holidays like a siren call to the office with every final spluttering breath. (White goo makes my palms sticky; I throw the bottle in the bin).

I feel the bones in my body and they feel saturated by summer. I know that in previous years I have only wanted more, more, more. I have not felt this tingling warmth, this sleeping cat which purrs within my limbs this year. This year, those bones seem content to dip their toes in the pool and sway slightly, face towards the sun, weight backwards and resting on bent hands: fingers are splayed. Autumn does not loom like a fearful thing; instead, I watch her come pleasantly like a far-off thing, a tunnel I know is at the end of this sandy, dusty road – a tunnel which is not wholly dark but one which will surely plunge out this summer light. It will turn this blue-yellow to something else, something more orange-red, more ember like and less beachy. I am content to watch myself, toes dragging in the cold water of the pool, and to watch as she draws nearer to me: this tunnel: this Autumn. I welcome her with a smile. The purring cat in my bones unfurls slightly, baring her under-tummy to the setting yellow sun. Orange will rise in the morning. With that, you can rest happy. 

I think I hear the crackle of instructs, their noise rising like the reverberating drum beats of a bass-techno basement disco. It is only the electric fence. Modernity meets humanity in a sizzling glare across nature: humanity has triumphed, and drawn her line in the sand — in the air, keeping the Nature in and the Human out. It cackles, triumphant.

The light is peachy. It tastes soft, like the inside of the bruised fruit. Milky, like peaches drenched in cream. 

There is a Saharan Sun in Sentral FranSe. I am not drunk, just back from a Surrealist exhibition. My father said Surrealism was a dead-end. I liked the way that sounded, but said that really surrealists were just trying to mimic life, and that perhaps life is a dead-end too. DEAD-at-the-END. Whatever, there is a Saharan Sun Setting in Sentral FranSe and I am hot under it — my Sheltering Sky falls downwards. 

Autumn is a car in the distance; I hear her rumble, her exhaust a little tired, a little dodgy. I see the dust she sends up from speeding along the road. I watch her progress, still far enough in the distance for me not to prepare for her visit; my hair is unbrushed, the oven is empty. The fruit bowl is overflowing; she is my guide. She whispers it is Summer still.