Bread

A broken dawn. An awakening in a grey room with microscopic bludgeons of heat jolting into him like someone with burning fingers was pressing him all over, testing him for some springback in his skin, tenderising him for the day. His tongue was spotted with tiny patches of dryness, as if the sun were inside his mouth, searing spitefully chosen morsels of his gums and throat. He turned, groaned, reached for the bottle of water on the floor. The springs shifted and clanked beneath him, a metallic sea.

(like three seas meeting at a place of mutual resistance, three seas carving into each other, metal waves colliding then being thrown out in resolution, twisting each other into shape in a resilient slow motion, moulding like dough, tearing bits off, repairing them, throwing each other around, pulling them back to a whole, like a piling up of three seas carved in bread dough…)

Somewhere else, she was dusted up to her elbows in white, checking the proportions of ingredients scrawled on the backs of torn-up poems pinned to a corkboard on the wall, next to the pair of photographs.

She’d had a stomach like bread dough, after the second child, after she’d burst through the revolutionary barrier of thirty-three and a third years without effort and without celebration. And from then on, to him, all of her had been like bread dough in the night, a mysterious rising next to him, a weird proximity of protein and yeast that was growing through itself, controlled, sustained, swelling just enough to make him feel smaller, always elastic, always preparing for something in the future, never delivering, like a loaf that was always proving, never baking…

He twisted off the cap and glugged down the water – flat now, slightly brackish, a mineral coating on the tongue. The street was breaking into its own awakening with a series of clattering clichés – shouted voices, a clanging milk float, a strident pair of blackbirds arguing over the pyracantha berries. He rolled back over the broken springs. Winced with the pain.

(like thorns of fire needling his soft flesh, entering as easy as the knife blade in the bicycle tyre…)

Somewhere else, she was measuring the ingredients into the bread maker, inventing mixtures, adhering to the stated proportions, dropping the salt and sugar into their opposite corners like opposing boxers, flicking in the yeast in a well in the middle as instructed, playing out the long ritual, modified only by experience, adding seeds, fruit, cheese, herbs as her mood dictated.

He’d taken to kneading into her stomach when they were both still asleep, tugging his fingers down into the mass of her skin, dreaming he was tearing her apart, fissure after fissure, clawing aside an aperture through which he could escape from the night into somewhere darker and more suffocating and less threatening, escape into a rubber-sided cave that was his size and no bigger.

Cars and vans were rolling up the street now, rattling the window frame as they revved unnecessarily; a taxi hooted outside someone’s door; children made their high-pitched way to school. He threw the empty water bottle onto the floor and it rolled past a crumpled piece of paper. He stretched over and picked it up; he sat up in bed, smoothed it out as best as he could. Felt the creased folds at his angled fingerprints. Creased folds like worn-out skin.

(like old skin flaking as he put the coins on the eyes…)

Somewhere else, having switched the machine on, she was checking the consistency, flipping the mixture away from the corners with a spatula as the paddle whirred around, adding a sprinkle of water or a splash of flour as appropriate, peeking in, watching the mix lump up, chew itself into itself, crease over itself, swell and compress.

One day he succeeded - he line-kicked his way through the pulsing folds, swimming in muscle. He lost all connection to any of his senses. It was as if his soul had been switched off. He swam through the nothingness inside her without needing to move. It was as if the emptiness were swimming around him. He lay there, wringing out contentment.

He could sense that outside, unnoticed, the bindweed was wrapping itself around anything it could lay purchase on. Smothering without killing. Waving in a broken wind jagging in unexpectedly from around the corner.

(like silent white-belled squashy trumpets kissing over his face, cooling the sweat from his skin…)

Somewhere else, the alarm beeped on the machine and she lifted the lid and flung in pumpkin seeds, rosemary, dried cranberries. She checked the consistency, and sprinkled in just a touch more water, to anticipate the moisture the re-hydrating berries would suck out of the mix. A tweak of pain flared at the wrist as she flung in the last berry.

He never woke up the same again. His hair had whitened and his fingers were crabbed into claws and they only relaxed gradually as the day wore on, slowly unclenching as his hair re-darkened through the lightening of the day. He’d been on the sick ever since. Time on his hands.

He looked down at the now-flat paper and started to read the words of the poem he remembered anyway:

A Ghost
Now
A ghost has moved between us
Flimsy as a soiled sheet
Blown out in the breeze
But once
The very air rose just for us
Brushed us with the life
That dared to pollute it
Dirty air grew big between us
Yeast-impregnated
Floating up spores
Like tiny
Pregnant
Constellations

Ah us!
We were the gluten of each other's blind accession
The feeding grounds, the battle grounds that crowned our shared ambition
Ah us!
We were twinkle-toed, sure-footed
And we made the right moves
We went spiralling
Feeding on each other
Then withdrawing sideways
Coiling upwards
Away and together
Away and together
Locked in a feeding-frenzy
Of repudiation
But then came the ghost
The ghost waved its hands
The ghost revealed the sparseness
Of our mutual foothold
So then we sank
Then we flattened
Then came staleness
Then came mould
And you are to blame
You know the reason
You know the ghost’s name
You know the crime
And now you will learn
The meaning of goodbye

He crumpled it again. Clumsily. With the backs of his hands. Threw it to the floor. Next to his wallet. Light was gaping through the thin weave of the curtains. He pushed his pincer fingers into the wallet. Removed two small photographs of children. Placed one over each eye. Sank back into sleep. The blackbirds continued to squabble and feed. The bindweed continued to twine as, somewhere else, the kitchen filled up to bursting with its familiar baked-on smell.