The Lazy Way to Keep the Rain Off

mother was wittering on about summer ending about the shopping days
left until christmas the window was open and I was worried about the
breeze blowing the vase over the flowers nasturtiums all looked so
beautiful just sitting there not really doing anything not listening to
her talk fiddling with the hem of my dress and its relation to my knees
watching the sky over the top of the houses opposite the sound of the
kettle the whistle like a throttled cat and would I like a drink
myself

I pretend I have not heard absorbed in the slow drift of the
world

I know all of his sounds he makes them the roll of the spokes the edge
of slowness as he winds down close along the kerb beneath my window
where he comes into view arching his leg over the frame of the bike and
pausing to remove his bicycle clips and straighten his jacket shadows
flinging themselves up the steps like wet black paint the bike is
lifted onto the pavement and off the pair of them walk drunken lovers
who need each other for support

there is a sense that he is the reason I am sat where I sit

even though he only stands there a tiny half second I am never
distracted from all I see in him I used to loiter to enable the glimpse
of him but it was all so fleeting I compare times it is always the same
to the dot each day I draw up a chair in the early evening with an
unread book smothered facedown on my lap without dreaming he is ugly no
doubt the greasy hair that falls in a cowlick as he draws to a stop the
small white hand that sweeps it back only for it to fall and be left
the end of every day takes so much out of us and there is an intensity
in the distance

the kerb to the windowsill and back

Gone I concentrate on the space where he was driving my eyes into the
cracks of the flags to try and hide away I am too old to still be here
is mother is too old to to still be here and upstairs they bang like
hard hands mother ignores my impression of the kettle until they stop
and I stop and we all stew in our dumpling of embarrassment

I look down on him small him with his sweet face despite everything
dragging his rags and patches looking for all the world like father
with that bag of baby cats off to drown them in the river and filling
his pockets with fist sized stones or bigger so tired please smile
little man before he walks on

and on and on and round and round

he never carries a briefcase he never carries an umbrella when it rains
water collects on his chin and plasters his hair flat or soaks his cap
if he is wearing a cap which he will sometimes this man out of time the
wind against his face and the weakness in him a good gust would blow
him clear of his feet and the bike far away this loving wee man who
loves his mother and his thin small hands could he catch me if I fell
from this height would he want to

the difference he goes his way and I go mine and neither of us fits the
other or knows what it could be and neither willing to find out

the day we spend together we go out riding I won't have a bicycle so
Peter that will be his name will lend me his spare on the steps in the
night as summer slips its toes into the northern water and the sky the
sky is ripe a peach seconds from the first bite the light stays longer
and I advance step by step to the street the new warmth we both feel it
the clothes that cling to his odd white body he parks near my heel
slowly left to right he stops and we smile and slowly slowly catchee
monkey only a smile today only a smile tomorrow but the day after that
or the day after that a word a hello a blush nervousness anxious feet
kicking the butt of the bottom step and the curve of the smile in his
face he says hello and the voice is nothing like I thought it would be
slightly feminine perhaps not his eyes the blue his head at an angle
cocky and wrong but right also a hand on the right handle bar his other
vanishes at the wrist in a pocket jangling change the new shirt he
wears every third day starch crisp still even at the end of the day but
still the muck at the collar he works hard with his hands and hates it
has poetry in him if anyone but cared the skin of his shoulders beneath
the skin of his shoulders and the skin of my shoulders our skin and
formal introductions over he lives alone he lives with his mother he
lives with his family he lives with his wife and children he never
thinks of me he is consumed he is lost at sea for me and all for me
alone and the sleepless nights shake and all he can think of is
me

there will be a day he cycles by without stopping his redundant face we
never mention it again the dreams of anything better are all just bad
dreams kittens struggling in a canvass bag with the water we've been
kidding ourselves all along we both knew it and I say the pain of every
day takes the pain away and he can't bear it never knew I loved him and
knew him never knew it was real never knew and how unbelievable to not
know or believe how I loved him all my heart his for the taking was his
all the more

all the more for the day he stops he stops and we talk he asks my name
and he seems more nervous than ever and I say - he will smile that
smile, the smile I always wanted to see all his teeth and me with my
new sight that can see in the dark that can see through walls and scale
tall buildings he props his old bike up against the railings one of his
feet gets as far as the second step up and me up here at the top with
my back against our door and his hands both of his hands shoved deep
into his pockets mining for gold or looking for diamonds or something
and I think his hands are trembling against his knees and beautiful he
asks me beautiful how I am and I smile and I smile

he asks me out riding and of course I say yes we could go at the
weekend we could take a picnic we could ride and walk and throw stones
to the bottom of the deepest river we could find and make big big
wishes

it all comes out in a mad jumble a mad rush I say yes three times
before he realises we both stop talking and then begin at the same time
again I tell him I would love to but I have no bicycle it is difficult
it isn't a problem he says he has been thinking of me he says that I
looked so pretty sat in the window it has taken him so long just to
work up the you know and I say yes I know so long to speak and there is
so much I want him to say and there are times when he says it all when
he gets everything just right and there are times when he hardly speaks
at all when he gets it all wrong and it doesn't matter because he says
I am just so glad that you know so glad I could burst and he blushes
and I play with the string in my lap

if the sky were really blue or grey I can't recall if there were clouds
when I hold my breath I find in his eyes a place I can't remember this
beautiful day let every second of this exchange last a lifetime all of
my happiness sown in a bag so many poppy seeds but only so many hold
the ends of my fingertips as if you are learning to hold and don't know
what it feels like leave your smell on my lips in my nose on my fingers
in my hair

you

we ride we go out riding and we kiss we smell the distance we wish we
eat and drink cider apples eaten and cores thrown over lofty country
hedges as we spur past with our legs up pedals whirring furiously
oarsmen at our feet and us laughing and flying by the green flesh of
the world

I have never been to this place I have never walked these ways or
breathed this air I have never seen this grass or this sky or felt this
feeling of flying down winding lanes gripped on either side by the
velocity of stillborn hedges and antique cows and sheep I have not seen
this so he shows me trains and aeroplanes and tells me the names of
things I notice the sleeping moon benumbed by the day lighting over us
small

close your eyes he says at the peak of an incline start riding but
close your eyes he says

we pause on a white line overlooking a dip he tells me to push off from
here and pedal downhill hard keep your handlebars straight you'll enjoy
it don't be scared you go first and I'll follow no you go first it
feels like flying het he says het calls me het and nobody has don't be
a wet blanket het push off and pedal and close your eyes it feels like
flying if you just let go

he pushes off and I follow we pedal and the wind whips his frantic hair
me gazing sideways at his neck watching the head arch wondering where
he is I squeeze my brakes enough to draw back so he won't see me won't
know I'm afraid won't see me flying a hundred million miles high at a
hundred million miles an hour all the air in the world competing to
grace the space immediately in front of him and his closed eyes
prompting I wish I could his head moving down to his side looking for
me and I close my eyes at the last minute so he thinks I did now we're
slower oh my sweet

mother says she has been talking to me for an age if I won't move
myself away from the open window then she'll just about do it for me
I'll get a chill who opened the window anyway it wasn't open before she
would swear it I'm wheeled over to the fireplace and the fire warms the
blanket over my knees now she returns to the kitchen and the window and
the flowers are behind me the curtains rest themselves now the wind and
the sky are bolted outside and me stuck with the tatters of the world
that flatter the better of us into thinking we're not broken but of
course we are and I look into the fire and I think that the lazy way to
keep the rain off is never go out never watch for him give up on all of
this and stare into the fire looking for words to describe the
awfulness of an afternoon in which times refuses to edge closer to
sleep not that I can sleep not now

my name is Etta and the beating of my heart the couple upstairs who
always make love have finished and there is rain now rain against the
windowpane and I want to drown I want it to flood the street and fill
this house from the hallway steps to the ceiling want to suck that
water up into my lungs want to wail and not think about them laying
naked together up there happy and together lazy with the pattern of the
rain on their windows and thinking about whether there is any sound
more beautiful than rain on windows and breathing naked skin and
rain

the rain and the love and the depth of the water in the deepest river
we could find etta sleeps by the fire while her mother chops vegetables
for the casserole bubbling stock and throwing stones and below

below

below

the man with the bicycle wonders where the girl is and wonders who will
love him in this world now she has gone and people become accustomed to
wishing for patches to cover holes