Merivale
On the 28th March 1941, Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse. This
poem is a moment wherein Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, is writing to her
sister, only a week or two after her death, where life continues to break back in,
with all of its sharp edges.
Have you ever been to Merivale?
She writes. While
Angelica, (six), fist full of flowers, arranges them in a pattern similar to that
of the painted tile of the hearth.
Violet stalks with purple faces for the V and daisies for the W while she sits,
cross-legged, in the milk-dish of sunlight coming in through the half-open
door.
Have you ever been to Merivale?
She begins again. Blots the end of the pen, nib down for too long on the fold
of cloth.
Watches the ink bleed out blue, blue, blue… Perhaps
She falters,
Perhaps we shall go, you, me
A song thrush in the wisteria just outside of the window calls from her nest,
Leonard whistles back from where he stands between the tulips
Vita perhaps,
Angelica hums a tune half-forgotten and half-remembered,
and the children, of course, they do so love to see you.
She smiles, watches her daughter weave her own initials with petals from
the Forsythia.
And, upon our last visit, Angelica fell rather in love with a cow which she gave
your name to
Out in the garden again, just by the door, Angelica picks weeds, plucked with
the hollow sound of the milk thistle or dandelion stalk
A brown cow, all doe-eyes, soft-muzzle. Standing on legs with knees like
pollarded trees.
She smiles. Gains momentum. Shifts in her chair that creaks and scrapes
against the flag-stone floor.
Netty’s here, folding your stockings, rolling them into yellow balls like eggs – like
eggs, in a basket.
As soon as she is gone, I’ll unravel them, fitting perhaps, for I seem myself
unravelled.
She hears Netty on the stairs. Knows the satisfaction she will gain from this
rolled nest of previously unravelled and unkempt stockings.
Did I tell you I see Vita now?
She comes to dinner in your place, sits in your chair with its back to the fire, with
some hesitation, of course.
She looks at me. And I in her see you, and you in me she sees, though neither of
us has spoken of this of course.
Instead, darling Tom slaps cards down upon the table, Queen of Hearts upturned,
only fleetingly, between her and I,
And then, of course, Duncan slaps his card down too – the King, perhaps, of
Spades, as suits him, and the moment passes, without whistle or trace
The song thrush sings again, greets her mate with a beak of soft sheep’s
wool scraps.
– only the echo for which I have spent these last few weeks digging for beneath
the roots of speculation, only to find dust and grit, the shrivelled bulb of a daffodil
dug up too often and the skull of a blackbird buried by Angelica, I am sure,
though at your behest.
Now, the ticking of the clock, the whirr, the readying, readying, then the
chime. Too loud. Always, too loud.
She closes her eyes, waits, waits, for stillness, and then
Have you ever been to Merivale?
She has digressed for too long.
I ask not because of the (now) literary bovine, but because, in passing a cottage I
noticed a young woman, a girl, perhaps, sat, elbows on the windowsill, Mrs
Dalloway between her hands – and it was such a shock to see you there, so
suddenly, so starkly, in this house painted the colour of our Cornish sea, because
you see (as only you do, you did) I look for traces of you, without knowing it at
all, and I find I cannot speak, cannot say, as you would have done, so eloquently,
but I cannot, neither with voice nor with pen the pain it is to glimpse you so
suddenly, and so sharply within your absence.
The house is quiet, the bird has flown, Angelica has gone, the garden too
tempting.
Such is death.
The stillness stretches.
But one of these days we may contrive to speak again. Who knows?
Again, the stillness
My darling Virginia, I miss you.
And this letter is nothing, without you to receive it.
The hesitancy of pen held above paper.
Yours, always,
V.
Lungs
and I had a dream
about this little glass girl
and she had eyes like the sky
just before a storm
and she had hair like the leaves
that fall before winter
and this little glass doll
she sighs as clear as day
but when I hold her to the light
there’s no breath in her at all
not a lung
not a throat
just a mouth
where the words never come
but the sighs come from
and I keep her on the windowsill
where the sun shines in
and the night cuts through her
and the stars see themselves
and she fills up with the sky
but she’s small enough to swallow
and she’s the bitterest pill to take
and she sits there in your stomach
like somebody made of lead
and her sighs just keep on coming
only now they’re in my head
and I keep her in my lungs
and I keep her in my throat
and she’s there in every kiss I give
and every tuneless note
of every word I ever say
and every word I wrote
Why the hell did it happen to me?
And I open
What if
What if
Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf and Dusty Springfield, Elinora Westfall is a multi-award-winning lesbian writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry and radio.
Her short story, A Terrible Thing Has Happened, was shortlisted for The Bedford Prize in 2022, her novel, Everland was selected for the Penguin and Random House WriteNow Editorial Programme in 2021, and her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios & Lift-Off Sessions, Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Camden Fringe Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, while her theatre and audio shows have been selected by The British Library and performed in London’s West End and on Broadway, where she won the award for Best Monologue.
Elinora was selected as one of the 2022/2023 All Stories alumni and her full-length poetry collection, Life in the Dressing Room of the Theatre and her collection of short stories, The Art of Almost, are forthcoming with Vine Leaves Press in 2023 and 2024.
Aloka 