ellen bell

I was meant to fly back to Oslo on Saturday at 1pm. I am still here. I thought about my other self, my other part, my other heart, on that plane heading back to the chill sharpness, that crisp, unforgiving cold. I wasn't there. Did someone else sit in my seat? I felt cut in half, severed, not quite in my body.

An intense weekend - brilliant with shining, almost unbearable, clarity. A nude christmas tree in an upper window. The lights of Battersea Bridge in the late afternoon gloom. Holding a little blue boy, feeling his month-old-weight - so impossibly perfect. He snuffled and snored and we watched transfixed, breathing in his every blessed breath. We had walked into a bubble of love and I inhaled it hungrily. And the next day, friends. No ceremony. Tea in blue and white striped cups. A cottage, snowdrops and that rich, sweet odour of cows.

Back in Wales and visiting the home. A shrunken grey-bearded man in a wheelchair, Roy. A faded tattoo of a cutter on his forearm.

'It used to be an oil painting....he was a real artist...two shillings it cost me...an oil painting....'

A warm corridor, two women wheeling a trolley with duralex cups of tea and a large plate of buttered bara brith and welsh cakes.

She sits in a chair watching a programme about penguins. She laughs, delighted by their land-based clumsiness. She is beautiful in a mauve top and polka dot skirt. Gnarled hands pat at her chest, distractedly finding the gold buttons of her cardigan. A reprieve. I stoke the embers of his relief.

No crying today.

(image courtesy of www.graciejewellery.blogspot.com )