Dirty Spinach Leaves

Travels with my Doxyclycline


The mountain rain descends in a cloud. We are all coated in mist, and the cold tickles up arms and down legs. I scratch my bites, and stare at the mirror. I look like I have chicken pox, a child staring at herself in the glass reflection. Not going to school, just staring.

The dreams of old days begin. Old bricks and old mortar crumble along old city walls. The cream silk bra gets dirty in Sheffield rain, and the touch of his young hands fade, like a dream on waking.

I have new dreams of Sally getting married in a white silk dress; she marries a theatre designer and her family watch from a distance. She makes a wild descion and her husband carries her down the stairs, her long red hair gleams like the mane of the Red Pony. The barn door is open when they arrive but the horse is waiting in the field, unharmed and ready to ride. She gallops off up the Irish moutain; we three witches wait on the sea shore, watching the ghost of a monk rise up from the waves. The sounds of the spoons clatters like hoofs on the stone road.

Here in a wooden house I stare at my tarot cards. The self searching hermit in a purple cloak stares back, eyes in his head, lighting the night path like fireflies on the fence. The lovers cross the clock like crawling spiders up wall, each leg a movement of time. You wait. I wait. I watch the soliders mill outside the cafe. The lemons fall and rot on the ground. The toy guns bang against their uniform back; this game feels real when I see the horse breath out a strong angry breath. I am reflected in the pupil; a tiny person swelling as big as an ego, the money hot as coal in my hand. The horse watches and stamps. She will throw me if I let her but I will not ride this horse. Let Sally saddle up the horse and race through the dream track unharrnessed.

This country watches me from its own mirror. My white skin glows like a leaf in the rain. The women in tight jeans smile as they eat their corn burgers. The corn crackles in the night; people are always coming and going, but nobody leaves.

Only the rain evaporates. Only the river sees the bottom and reflects the sky.