You walk into my office barefoot
stepping softly on the cracking eggshells, pale blue and
tell me in this radio airwave static voice
how your mother dreamt again last night

you were falling off the edge of a cliff, the one you remember
as a watercolour painting, hair wet
how you know what she did not tell you
you jumped, you did not fall, you jumped.

You will fold tissues into small shapes
as I listen to the things you cannot talk about
they drift between us in gestures
like you
always floating half an inch above your bed
even in your sleep,
you coughed up blood in your sink
this morning, when you looked again
it was not there.

I want to talk about science, you want to talk about lying
in your bathtub in some kind of trance
the pills I prescribed you
a string of pearls around your neck

how quiet it is inside your mum’s car
when she drove you to the hospital
the words “we need to talk” freezing on lips like snowflakes.

In the waiting room you will both hold your breath
a cathedral hush, hands clasped as if in prayer

to a God who will rewind the home videos
the sound of your voice at the age of two, your body
made up of 78% water, her
drinking it up like the sweetest thing she’s ever seen.

Skin translucent under my office lights,
I ask if you’ve tried square breathing
you tell me you rose from the ocean
like Venus, you were dripping and reborn

I ask you to think about why you confuse art and death.
If you had not risen to the surface of the sea fighting for breath
would you have called yourself Ophelia, another pretty girl drowned?
You fill a plastic cup from my water fountain.

I want to talk about science, you want to tell me
in the bathtub you touch your knees and elbows and skin
in water you feel safe, a child unafraid
I tell you your body was made up of 78% water at birth
you think you are trying to get back into that inert state.

I am taking notes, you say your best friend whispered
you are more than the scent of a candle just blown out
at the flickering vigil, their summoning ritual
too late for the voicemail “call if you need me”.

I want to talk about science, you want to talk about
the first time you crawled through the woods at night
to find the place in the rich dirt they buried you
under the stars you pressed handfuls of earth into your mouth

hair matted to your forehead with blood.
I see your face now like a paper lantern in my sleep
lit from within, this time a gunshot wound,
this time a noose, you staring upwards in some kind of trance

as the trees above you whisper the truth.

# # #

Anita Markoff is in her final months of an MA in English Literature -Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen. She has been published in ‘Spilt Milk’ magazine, with work forthcoming in ‘Meanwhile’ and ‘Reanalogue’. Femme but not fatale, she spends her time tending to her plants and daydreaming about being featured in a women’s fiction course fifty years from now.

Photo: Ashley Bean