Lie against my shoulders, darling. Press me in--or turn your face to the wall
and let me close my eyes against your back. My cheek wished for the rumple of
your hair--yours. I knew the sickness would come. You have made me sick
again, you conniving innocent rat. First you toxified my tea, held the
silver teaspoon (your family heirloom) like a butterfly against my lips,
"Drink, darling," you told me. My blood ran thin and erratic as you took
my pulse and pressed the damp cloth to my neck.
The fever makes everything less real. Maybe there was water in my eyes and
maybe the world really blurred when you crushed me down under your weight,
murmuring like a bird in my ear, "Darling.." Your mouth was warm and tinted
with toothpaste and I thought you were going to breathe life itself between my
cold cold lips. No, it was always more than I imagined. You were never
so beautiful as when you loomed above me with your palms pressed tight to
my ribs, and I saw the light fall through your hair--Oh god. I think you
loved me most when I was utterly at your mercy, frail and half-delirious.
Didn't I call you my angel? I started to bleed lilac scent.
They brought me roses on Thursdays and Sundays. They laid them mauve
and pink and white and peach, camped them like sentinels round my body
and I could smell their petals in my dreams. They used to ask if they
could lie beside me, stroke my fluttering eyelids, trace the line of my
shoulder ever-so-gently.
No, I said. I was too ill. There was no one I could stand to have beside me
but you, and I craved you, the soft texture of your cotton shirts, the careful cleanliness you would keep, the comforting solid shape of your body in
smooth linen (never wool, you disdained its scratchiness). To sleep against
your side was my peace. You were the anagelsic to your own poison. I didn't
mind when you dug your half-moon nails into my arms and whispered secrets
in my ear. I didn't flinch when you reached into my gown to tear away the
locket, when you broke the gold clasp and paused over the pictures before
pocketing it. You watched my calm mirror-dark eyes so intently as you
peeled me. Did you think it was wrong? Nothing could be right or wrong
in that room. I wasn't dying, just sick and vulnerable and that was what
you wanted, wasn't it? To keep me in the tower for a year and a day,
to taste my smiles and take them prisoner, yours and no one else's.
You knew me too well. Healthy, I might have driven you to despair. I
was always a strong, proud thing. Do you remember, darling?
Do you remember that day in the grass, when you showed me the daffodils
and I coaxed you behind the tree? Do you remember the daffodils you
twined in my hair, the daffodils you stuffed into my cambric sleeves?
Do you remember the shade that concealed your trembling hands? Do
you remember how I smiled against your collarbones and traced the lines
of your palms like the lines of a fairytale page? Tell me you
remember, darling.
Tell me you remember and remember that I loved you then, though
you were already making me sick with infection--that's right. I knew.
I let you infect me, I let you in, for always. And when the year
and the day is over, I will stop taking your toxified tea, and let the
ravens lead me down the staircase, into the garden.
I will disappear, and you mustn't doubt me. For either I will die, or
I will be well again, and I will come back for you, to press the
daffodils into your hands again and again, until you know you know
that I love you, I love you.