The White Sheet

Begins.
The cigarette is lit, the face is drawn; pen hovers over the white, white sheet, trembling slightly, whilst seconds pass into minutes, minutes into hours, and hours into days and weeks and months and ... Do you remember that summer? Warm, languid days that lingered long past their bedtime; dark, sensuous nights that clung passionately, gently fusing into dawns and their choruses...

I.
I don't think there are any summers now; no skies heavy with colour, no more sinking into warm-syrup meadows bubbling with the rising incense of bruised grass beneath spread red-and-white calico, creaking wicker and the smoke of hovering gnats; only manilla, matrices, red-and-white and red-eye-read strokes and never Never-Never Land; never, never, ever again Et in Arcadia Ego.

II.
So many ladybirds that year, spinning and sputtering the whirligig breeze, spinning and spattering the sand below the cliffs thrown up like furrows. Out beyond the ship-marked horizon the sky cracked gold, shaking our glass asylum while pearly rain bounced the bull’s-eye panes. We spiralled stone staircases, curses round in our mouths and gazed a cannon's shot across fields and towers, daring those old ghosts to clank and moan in our dreams...

III.
I remember that Emile sang to the hot interior of the car that threaded its speed between the vents of the tunnels far below; my head full of rubber-scent, whale-jaw, malt and tall, tall clocks. Later there was feather-cake and faint lavender, and the final journey through fanfares and down-town lights...

IV.
And she'd always had grey hair. She'd never not been old. He'd been shot or choked or something, maybe, so he'd never bought her the ring. When he died nobody noticed so she bought the ring and his name disappeared for thirty years until one day it came back, I mean right back, and got its feet under the table, I mean right under, but nobody minded because time's-a-great-healer an' all...

Ends.
...exhale smoke, to eddy and curl around and over and above, above and beyond the picture watching from the wall, beneath the mirror reflecting the face above, the room beyond, a lifetime away. A small tear drips unbidden to splash a floret upon the white, white sheet, and the rack of memory tightens another notch...