Olivia Payne

Two Pieces
by Olivia Payne

Summer to Spring

The universe is in its springtime. This is what I realised, in an Earth-bound spring, in a field filled yellow. My girls pushed ahead of me, calling to each other, trampling lesser flowers and scaring the birds which rose suddenly beneath their feet. They haven’t yet learnt the unceasing rhythm of the year; it is always a surprise for them. They pay no attention to the warning signs of longer days and daffodils. When I make them look, life is still obscuring death in its brilliance, the tall flowers’ blooms distracting them from plants already dead, decaying, or which were stunted from the start. It is left to me to think externally and notice.

If the universe is expanding then it must be spring: flowering outward, pushing itself into being. It will reach summer soon — and relatively soon — and be at its fullest. Unimaginable, sweet fullness. Then retracing its steps and shrinking back into nothingness, into the nut of everything. Curled up and waiting for its next spring, when it will come forth again, the same and yet different. And whatever made it grow would be as unintelligible to the universe as water is to a desert flower, roots blindly growing deep into nothing until — everything. There’s always everything, but sometimes it’s just more spaced out.

April wasn’t born in April, nor May in May, or June in June. That would be too easy. I hoped to write these months onto them along with the names. I pin things from their springtime onto a page, stilling the spring in them forever. Everything is captioned and documented: baby teeth and clothes, heights on the wall, memories of first days, medals marking victories of 20 metres, 50 metres, scraps of drawings with shaking lines and impatient colours. In the morning, whilst they eat breakfast and grow, I write down their dreams.

“It was sort of like I knew it was him, even though it wasn’t his face?”

“And then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try and remember. It’s important.”

When they do it all again, even if they don’t realise, it will help to have someone who paid attention. When they unwind themselves back out, there is a chance — it’s small, infinitesimally small — that we’re here again, together. And maybe we can find each other in our spring, next time. And I won’t reach summer first. I won’t know everything first. It will be long days of knowing just each other, turning heads and eyes at the same time.

We walk through the field again on their way to school. They disappear as easily into the grey building as they do into the green grass. When I come home, alone, I check on their room. There are hairs of brown, gold, auburn, strewn on the pillows and the sheets. Thin ropes to them, of them, they’ve left for me to hold. In their clothes, abandoned on the floor, I uncover catchweed. In their games they throw it, pin it on each other’s backs, laughing. Little stars of green, still clinging past death. And in their pockets, dead flowers they want to keep forever.

---

The Unbuilder

Every day

Maybe even

Several times

A day

You go out

Into the street

And you walk around.

 

I don’t know which ways you go

 

And  you take a brick

From a house

 

I don’t know what makes you choose

      Which house, which brick

 

You take the brick from its wall

 

I don’t know exactly how

      But you come back

      With your hands red

      And it must be

      From the clawed dust

      From your torn skin

 

And you bring it home

With you

To me.

 

There’s a small wall

Forming in our

Living room

      Our only room

 

From hard-won

Stolen hurt.

 

You come home

And shake out

Bricks

From who knows

Where

Leaving wounds

In the streets

In all the homes

We could have

Lived in

Together

Once

     

      If we could ever

      Leave this one

 

Room.

 

Olivia Payne is a librarian working in London. She is an alumni of the Faber Academy and a proud member of the Write Like a Grrrl community. She has short fiction published or forthcoming in Litro Magazine, STORGY, and The Amphibian Literary Journal. She is currently working on her first novel.

Click for our interview with her. We encourage you to follow Olivia on Twitter @OliviasLitLife.