The World of Keys & Locks

I am so lonely in this tight little room – so few people come anymore.  Wrapped as I am like the Christ child in a bundle of swaddling, preserved in mothballs. The sunlight streams through the high window, a vista on the sky and occasional birds passing by, at this great height.  Like liquid gold it is an act of beneficence to my shorn head, keeping me warm in the coldness of isolation.

I know they do not mean to be cruel, the other people. They see me as I do not experience myself, as being frail as bone, a splinter of a child, hurting at every step. I climb up when they are not watching, carefully sliding my chair, inch by inch, to peer out over the gardens, lush with colour and light, like the paintings I pore over in my many books. A facsimile for touch and smell and sound, being down in the dirt, pulling dandelion clocks from their stems, feeling the prick of grass under my feet, dancing over lawns like a seed so light and dainty as I hum to myself in the thrumming summer air, ignoring my spine of flint and its capacity to break. I imagine so hard I can almost hear the crickets, the scratching of their tiny legs, and the call of the blackbird aching for her mate.

My inner world is my salvation. The memories from before, like jewels, the sensations and frissons of connection warm and sustain me. They keep me alive, stop me from my perpetual wondering. Why am I here? Why am I no longer allowed out? Where do they hide the keys?

Sometimes the kind lady comes, the one who smells of vanilla and rosemary like a special kind of cake, soft and sharp, perfect on the tongue. She talks to me but never explains. I think she sees me, the world behind my eyes, the space where I am free. I sense her searching gaze on me whenever I look away.

She brings the white cat Spooky to visit. He is chubby and fat chinned through captivity but a creature of deep affection, racing round my room in a delirium of pent-up energy and falling into a dizzied heap on my lap. He too is trapped on the top floor, his only recourse to escape squeezing through five inches when the window is raised as the summer heat threatens to choke me. But he might also fall to certain death or bounce back, as cats can.