Rebirth

I can taste her still. Spreading through my mouth like a bruise.
Lingering.
Not fragrant, yet not repellent.
Warm and fusty.
Like an old room, an old dream, an old coat.
Furring the tongue like an old scuffed carpet.
The false memory of her breath faintly tickling the back of my teeth.
I legged it through a gap in the traffic and she was there.
Lying on the pavement.
Yes, not falling but lying.
Lying alone.
In her own taboo.
Lying in a little pool of stillness - no-one saw her fall and now she's falling through the pavement, falling away from life.
We converged from five directions like five dungflies.
And hovered in fumbling dogged awe.
Her eyes were tightly shut - as if sealed-over.
The blotches on her face were slightly sunken.
The flesh was turning vegetable - starting to wither, starting to harden, starting to become a dried gourd of a former life.
She was sinking to an anaesthetic snooze.
is she is she I can't tell I'm not very good at this did her eyelids move?
head bend down ear to mouth anything there? please God why me
i'll go for an ambulance!
good idea smart thinking show some initiative thanks a lot but that gets you off the hook doesn't it? you're not left to deal with this.
is she or isn't she?
cramped and clumsy fingers feeling for the scrabbed and puckered neck
is there a pulse? is there a pulse?
come on let's get her on her back!
We scrape her over on her scuffed, old-fashioned coat
My lips bear down
From behind, a semi-crescent chorus of advisers
get her chin up
close her nose a bit more
take it easy
the volume screaming higher
From the front, a good firm female voice zooms in and a pair of good firm female hands start to bang the battered heart towards the sternum with five crisp blows.
now - two good breaths
And I bend and she inflates from my kiss
And I bend and she inflates from my kiss
Again the muscled forearms perform their brisk and measured downbeats
And again: two good breaths
And I empty my lungs into hers and she puffs up like a bullfrog
She deflates and I exhale and up she puffs again like a frog who's swallowed a mouse
I'm a nurse here let me check and a grab of the sugar-white thumb and the freckled fingers - where's the pulse - nothing there - keep going!
and she cradles the ringless fingers while we stoop and carry on.
five from her and two from me a lucky number seven isn't it?
And every time I bend to force my oxygen to her bloodstream,
I wonder what she's like - she, this innocent, this passer-by, this faller-down, this victim.
The one who'll die or survive.
What are the mundane facts?
She's brown-haired/ginger
middle-aged/elderly
lives on her own/happily married
well off/poor
a devoted mother/childless
wicked/pleasant
all of these things are true and all of them are false because none of it really matters and none of it affects the cold incursion of our murderous hands and murderous mouth pounding our lives into the slab of meat she is trying so hard to become; none of it affects the brutal rhythmic truth of
pump pump pump pump pump
and blow and blow and
pump pump pump pump pump
and blow and...
WAIT! We've got her back! I've got her pulse!
She sighs and gasps and gives a little groan but I still can't feel the breath. It's shallow as the grave.
And the gourdskin doesn't crack and the eyes are still shut tight though the eyeballs start to flicker in their wrinkled leather pockets flicker into death flicker into death no pause and sink back into life.
We drag her over, wrench her worn-out knee and force her into place so she can breathe. We accidentally smack her heavy bottom in our haste to welcome back the reborn baby to the world.
We try to shout sweet nothings to her brain.
We hear the sirens before we see the lights.
We stand around and wait while it roars around the block then stops - the city's one-way system cannot - will not - make exceptions.
And perhaps we all just feel a little foolish.
They dismount - a man, a woman. A common uniform. A meeting of eyes - a shared recognition.
They know her - It's Noreen isn't it come on Noreen you're OK. Don't worry.
It's only now I see the watchers banked behind us, concentrically looking on.
(More widely-dispersed, like the outer half-rings of the amphitheatre)
Come on, now, break it up. There's nothing here to see. Come on, get on with your shopping. Don't be so flaming nosy!
The wind disturbs the blankets as they lift her on the stretcher.
OK, Noreen. Let's hit the road - don't worry, love, I've got your handbag, so we're going on the ale, just the two of us, OK?
Bandaged into sheets like an honorary mummy, she chooses not to speak.
And then they're off off burning rubber - another minor happening in a normal working day.
And we six, who polarised together, mutter our inconsequential clichés and disperse
and trudge our mundane paths to shops or homes or work
while she takes her strapped-down magic carpet ride from death to life
as the sirens blare a trail through the bright and unshocked streets
and the rug-taste
of the last kiss
starts to squat on my tongue.