Griselde’s Stream of Consciousness
08-Aug-02
This is a little stream-of-consciousness passage that I wrote as a writing exercise to sharpen up my skills before tackling Griselde for real.
Topsy-turvey, tossing and trembling, tray of medicines, full of sin and shame and sorry.
Every day. Every day the virile men– orderlies– come to work here at the hospital, hollow and full of spittle. They are manly, men, with big manly hands and strong backs, to hold screaming women down and penetrate their skin with sharp silvered needles.
Her hand halts over the pill-cup, a stutter, a stop. There are only yellow ones today. Yellow cup– no, white– yellow cup of yellow pills to make yellow pee– ochre and mustard and sunflower seeds.
Oh, god, I need the sun. I miss the sun. I mist this son. He’s in school now, college, oh my god, and I have missed him. I faltered. I fall. Turd. I fall into the yellow back yard with the dog turds, land mines. Land. Mine. No, not-mine. So very not-mine that it hurt when it came to hit me.
oh my god, that was fifteen years ago. Fifteen yellow summers have passed. Wallowing in the past. Swallowing the past every day with my yellow and ochre and mustard-seed pills. I took a spill. That is all. A spill. A pill. My spill takes my pills.
Everything is chaos if it is orderly. Even man-orderly. Especially man-orderly.
I swallow the yellow spills.