The masonry was painted a subtle mustard brown, the window frames and doors a brisk white. The building was probably early Victorian, a balanced structure, a porched front door separating two large rooms with French doors leading out to a gravelled drive. In front no garden, just an expanse of cropped grass, where one could imagine croquet being played on a summer's day. The house stood on its own a 100 yards distant from the road. A few miles further on he saw a promising turning and left the main road.
He found himself looking to turn off the main road: to wander into unknown country, to stop the car and walk a little. There was an 8-sail windmill, a sign to a doll museum, the occasional church spire rising above trees. Either side of the road vistas of vast fields stretched into the distance. He had driven a few miles out of town, metaphorically shaken the dust of its Sunday streets from his shoes. The January afternoon was the wrong side of three o'clock, but the relentless wind and rain of the morning had subsided leaving clearer skies, thin high clouds. It had been a long day, an early start, a hundred mile drive, and he was going home, back to a quiet evening before another busy week. I'm collecting my strength one day I shall manage without her,Īnd she'll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me.
She may be a saint, and I may be ugly and hairy,īut she'll soon find out that that doesn't matter a bit. Now I see it must be one or the other of us. I used to think we might make a go of it together -Īfter all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close. Yet I still depended on her, though I did it regretfully. Living with her was like living with my own coffin: Or brag ahead of time how I'd avenge myself. So I was careful not to upset her in any way She'd supported me for so long I was quite limp. I wasn't in any position to get rid of her. Wears the face of a pharaoh, though it's made of mud and water. Then she could cover my mouth and eyes, cover me entirely,Īnd wear my painted face the way a mummy-case Wasting her days waiting on a half-corpse! She wanted to leave me, she thought she was superior,Īnd I'd been keeping her in the dark, and she was resentful. Then I saw what the trouble was: she thought she was immortal. Simply because she looked after me so badly.
POEMS ABOUT TIDINESS SKIN
She let in the drafts and became more and more absent-minded.Īnd my skin itched and flaked away in soft pieces I felt her criticizing me in spite of herself,Īs if my habits offended her in some way. She stopped fitting me so closely and seemed offish. In time our relationship grew more intense. Holding my bones in place so they would mend properly. She humored my weakness like the best of nurses, Her tidiness and her calmness and her patience: In the morning she woke me early, reflecting the sunįrom her amazingly white torso, and I couldn't help but notice I didn't mind her waiting on me, and she adored it. You could tell almost at once she had a slave mentality. I patronized her a little, and she lapped it up. Not her whiteness and beauty, as I had at first supposed. I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a roseīlooms out of a vase of not very valuable porcelain,Īnd it was I who attracted everybody's attention, Without me, she wouldn't exist, so of course she was grateful. She began to warm up, and I saw her advantages. Then I realized what she wanted was for me to love her: When I hit her she held still, like a true pacifist. I couldn't understand her stupid behavior! I blamed her for everything, but she didn't answer. I couldn't sleep for a week, she was so cold. Only much whiter and unbreakable and with no complaints. She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints.Īt the beginning I hated her, she had no personality -Īnd I was scared, because she was shaped just the way I was This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,Īnd the white person is certainly the superior one. I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:
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