Chapter 2: Ophelie’s Soliloquy

“It was a long time ago,
when I discovered something odd
about myself.

The chorus of a song would always leave
my eyes in tears, not knowing what hit me –

looking at a Magritte painting would give me
the strangest sensations,
like someone pulling a shroud
upon goose-pimpled flesh

And the odd sense of being here before
in an unfamiliar place,
or how life seemed to unwind
like a never-ending recording
of what looked like someone’s life –
not mine.
So I began to analyze myself.
I ask myself now – when did I start?

…I can’t remember.

Like a silent, watching passer-by;
when it occurred, I would step back,
not wanting to get my shoes dirty
and prod this murky, undulating mess,
tightly wound, like a ball of yarn

They were not ‘feelings’,  but shades;
blotches of vivid colour
that stretched into
boundless landscapes
as far as my eye could see

Shades of anger, blood-red
that stretched a pin prick
into carmine daggers of
obsession, always
spilling over
at the wrong moments

These violet tones of joy,
patterning splotches
into jerky, flushed ecstasy while
listening to Chopin,

or whispery notes
of light azure, a comforting yew branch held against
my cheek since childhood, not a baby rattle;
more tender than any mother’s touch –
sometimes emerging
during heavy monsoons
that gradually deepened over time,
lingering invitingly
below a widening crevasse

of a yawning bottom, that I could not see.

Circling above it all, akin to a proud eagle –
a headless moon, devoid of all emotion
that held the violent seas at bay,

holding itself far from this
intangible, obscure…thing.

That headless moon was I,
I, who stoically chose
to stand above it
and refused to merge
with this wanton chaos,for fear that it would
wrap me in its terrifying, lucid
embrace and send me

hurtling

towards that dark
lovely
crevasse,

the beginning of all life
and, quite naturally
where the light fails
to penetrate.

So Mother, tell me,

How could I even begin, to explain myself,
to someone else,
let alone you,
and expect anyone to understand?

Would they see, what I saw?

Would they see, what I felt?

I’m so lonely, Mother!”

(This is a poetic response to Jessi‘s request for ‘more, please’! I have a feeling this might flesh itself out into something much better. Readers, should I make this into a short story?? The first chapter’s over here.)

© Zelda Reville