To The River Ouse
The water swirled intimately about her, its secrets a hushed crowd whispering. At first everything seemed too loud, the water, the birds, the voices. Now all she heard was the heartbeat of the Ouse. The soothing bubbling and murmurings of its depths and shallows. She moved silently just beneath its surface, gaze fixed outward.
Here she could exist without pretense or prescription, without explanation or episode. Tempered and cradled by the currents, here she could exist as she truly was, without fear of going mad again.
Along the way she had lost a shoe and her wedding band. What would Leonard think? She, always losing things, he, always finding them. Would he find her she wondered? Her hair loose and wild about her head. This moment kept unfolding. Door after door opening to each memory and privately curated fragment of her inner psyche.
Her mind continued drifting, what about Vanessa she wondered as a curious eel slithered about her hands? A moss covered boulder grazed her left shoulder, dislodging a moment they had shared in the hallway. Her, feet dangling from hallway furniture as she mused upon some inner existential morsel. Vanessa, drawing her back to the real world, as she often did, with talk of Clive. Or was it about flowers for the party?
Oil and pastel still life swirled into motion. Virginia lay in this suspended state, ripples of wind moving over the surface of the water. Rings of wavelets outlined her form. Disheveled petals and leaves swirled as she moved upon the current, a morose and mercurial Impressionist painting, wet all over.
It all shimmered away as a tiny school of fish darted across her face. The more she tried to focus, the less she could keep hold of the past. Everything was slowly becoming fuzzy, clouding over from the edges inward.
Soon she felt the white foam of the rapids spitting out about her. The toes of her shoes bobbing above the surface. She was being taken more strongly now. No longer looking outward, eyes fixed to the sky. She could see the muddy swirl below, the occasional glance of a boulder, then river bank, then darkening sky.
Virginia was feeling a new sense of cold creeping in, an electricity moving from her fingertips into her core. And she felt so full, fuller than she had ever felt before. The memories and stories, all the living she had done, all the suffering, all the years, the many hours. Her life was leaking out all about her, and she without her writing desk, had no way to put it all together again.
All the love came surging forth at an incomprehensible pace. Wave after wave crashing in upon her. No lighthouse guiding her home, no Leonard with a cup of tea. Virginia felt herself coming apart, first her clothes, then the stones had fallen out one by one to the muddy bank, then tendons, then ether. Slowly she understood, she was no longer here or there, not in this river nor in that room. Virginia was simply ceasing to exist.
