An everyday item saved me. Its woven ridges and cushioned seat: a lifeline, once, offering buoyancy when waves crashed high and engulfed my hectic head.
It waits, beyond the kitchen window. Vacant. Yet, it knows my deepest secrets, entwining them within a tapestry, bearing claim to hidden knowledge.
If it had a mouth to speak, I’d stopper it, shift it to darkened corners of a cobwebbed shed, desiring to be physically closer, to hold tight within her globular embrace.
*
She, as I have learnt to call her (‘it’ suggests she is more ‘thing’) summons me away from an inside gloom, wanting to chat, rekindle our shared fire.
Channelling, I whisper apologies, sensing I have slighted her, summoning confidence to revisit. I desire to chat, refuel our dwindling fire, burning low through too much time apart. My busy, stressful life is to blame.
With a steaming coffee cup, I return, eyeing pieces of me stitched into her olefin surface. Eyes, ears, mouth, tongue and gut exist in ornate scarlet swirls, so I trust, like a child, spilling woes.
As a nested fledgling, I am lost in down. Taking sips of caffeine, I prepare to unpick thoughts. Yet, today, they are locked prisoners rattling at bars, speaking in foreign tongues. I drop my shoulders, breathe in springtime air, summoning worries to purge like split veins.
Hours pass. I sit dreamless, beguiled by stillness.
*
Clutched by chilled fingers of night, the coffee cup falls, splintering to shell-like fragments around slippered feet.
Worries will surface, I convince myself.
Motionless, I stay. Churning words, she whispers torments from a forked tongue. I do nothing but listen: a hostage witnessing her unravelling venom.
“You’re mine,” she crows, as wicker hands bind me.
– Emma Wells
Emma is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with various literary journals and magazines. She writes flash fiction, short stories and novels. She is currently writing her sixth novel.