8. the crying & laughter inside, it is very loud
there is this crying inside, the crying of a child left alone, crying down there somewhere inside me, it's almost as though i can hear it, or that my chest suddenly jolts from it, as if from a tram that rumbles to a stop, so that its back end crashes into its front end, like a caterpillar coming to a dead standstill at the end of a leaf, the crying & laughter inside, it is very loud, it's as though i'm pregnant with it, until i cry it out, cry good & strong & hard, or until i cry myself to sleep, & then the child curls up & vanishes, on other days when i am smiling out at the world, there is the crazy thin man inside, doing all these cartwheeling stunts, yippie! yippie! yippie!, he is slobbery & dressed very tackily & he's cartwheeling away in there, bouncing off my insides as though they were a soft pink padded cell, somersaulting with his long bandy legs & he's like a rubber man, with greasy hair, & he's causing a lot of trouble & disturbance inside me, he has sharp teeth that are ready to bite a hand that reaches in to touch him & he is well & truly out of his restraining jacket, & like the child that needed to cry itself into sleep, he needs to be dosed with medication, so that he might also sleep, so that he might curl up to vanish in peace, like our very best emotions, or those memories that have retired inside, i do not know whether i store the cartwheeling man & the sobbing child, when they curl up, they fade, vanish, often i don't feel them but then they come back |
