She plays clock patience of the carpeted floor of her ward
dormitory. She had been playing the solitary game for hours now, she was only
half aware of the dormitory’s morning routine. Some of the women went to the TV
room, some straight to the smoking room one had a day pass to spend the day
with her daughters, as the ward emptied cleaners appeared, they made up the
beds and put a blue and white NHS towel at the end of the bed, two cleaners
took on the bathrooms and showers none of them noticed Shirley there playing
clock patience. Shirley didn’t mind she was used to being invisible, most
people barely noticed her, not the nurses, the doctors lost inside their own
eyes, but it especially hurt when the others in here, in the locked ward
ignored here
Shirley had decided long ago that time was a broken gift,
for a long time she wept when she realized that and she did stuff that got her
arrested and making a right fuss six months section, she was so angry, why do
these other people affect my life so much? Why couldn’t the people in her
dreams why could they be real? They saw her, they opened her up and made her
laugh, but it was always a long time in this until she was allowed to dream
again. She started up another game and slowly swift memories of her dream last
night, the one she had woken up with such surprising delight and
disappointment, but still…
Shirley trekked all the paths in the forest, especially
those she hadn’t gone along before. Above the magpies helped her and, in their
ways, guided to the centre of the White Forest. Now the sun was lowering and
the magpies would have yawned if they could and one by one slowly flew off for
a night in someone else’s nest. All through the night in the star’s lights
light footed and then on to the next morning she went wandering on alone, lost.
Soon all the food she’d taken from the Palace was gone and as she tired walked
all she could think about was jelly
She bumped into a large man, pasty-faced, he seemed to not
being able to see Shirley and carried on talking and talking talking, as he was
before she knocked into him with fast voice, stumbling over the words, afraid,
stuttering:
‘The truth is I am guilty. Extremely. And despite what my
lawyer said, the guy had the jury in his palms he had them strung up like
puppets. The prosecution team might as well have been somewhere else, he spoke
with a booming voice.
Not only did I kill the man I was accused of murdering, as
well I murdered a few of his lovers, but let this case bring us all a time of
thought and patience, never rush a decision especial when the jury loves, 12
good people, looking like angels I disguise.’
He walked away then almost trembling, taking a cautious look
back at Shirley
Shirley wet into the
corridor turned and went in the direction of the refectory she took her fill and
starts playing clock patience. And must’ve half dreamt:
She wanders the White Forest and found hidden pathway, but
more a graceful avenue that led to the steps into the cloudbanks that took her
to the rage of the sun he climbs up hand after hand up the clouds clutching
mist as she swam to the cloudless blue where stars shared the sky with the sun
and the moon .
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