Becoming by Roberta Lawson

She always did want some kind of God figure; a something-so-overwhelming that she might dissipate into mere molecules in its presence. She always did want to be simultaneously smaller and larger. Deep down she’d always wanted to worship. Not God himself but some eternal spirit that changes shape each minute, hour, day, that zooms beyond time itself. He’ll be that person, that metaphor, he’s promised her. She can respond only to this, to what he offers. She wants to hand something over, to surrender. Control. This is larger than control. You might think this is about her body, but this stretches far beyond flesh, wraps round and round her. Them. He wants her kneeling. She wants to climb inside his pocket. She’s bigger than this whole room. He’s enormous. She is that dispersing, glimmering sum of molecules. They’re melding now; into some snakey, shifting glob of energy, a sort of fluid dance. She sinks down. He’s taller still. He’ll tell her what next. He’ll tell her who – what – she’ll be, next.

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Crackle by Roberta Lawson

He is born in suburban isolation, raised religious; steeped in rugged individualism and the superiority of the self. Aged seventeen he flees for London and New York, for Bangkok, Delhi, Jaipur, Tokyo. In thronging hordes of people at first he cannot tell if he hears his own heartbeat or that of those around him. When music plays he — finally — hears only music, scents everything all at once. Fleeing, running, milling, dancing, he falls into giddy women, men; is intoxicated on muddled humanity. As he brushes his shoulders against other people’s shoulders until he almost has no shoulders — until he is just energy, merged inside a bristling ball of human energy — who he was begins to blur. Lost in a sea of one other, he begins to exist.

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Awakening by Roberta Lawson

The first time – when things were ropey-precarious, and tentatively she hovered at the still place, it emerged between her eyes. A presence larger than everything that had gone before, greater than all yet to come. And the horn pushed out – gentle, probing, like a searchlight, something so pure and illuminating that everything that weighed her down could recede, dwindle. This that is stronger than the bruises on the inside. This that heals her from the inside-out. Later she’ll meet it in dreams, in whisper-touches, in red roses ripe in bloom, in that certain feeling in her belly that says ‘Stop now,’ ‘Rest now,’ ‘Go now;’ in the place without words that maps a smile on her mouth, offers softness when the whole world is tired, seedy, when she is worn thin. The landscapes change. She changes. The difference between before and after is that now it’s here – whatever happens: it’s here.

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Animal by Roberta Lawson

Not the skin or the hair; not nails, teeth; no gentle touch. It must be the gut. The only way that any of them will find what they’re looking for is to go for the gut, and reach inside. To begin: a list of secrets. Let’s say the secrets are a shadow. The lights are out, and now they’re ready. To reach this place they’ll take a journey. Down through the mind, through the channel of the neck, down, down, until the body opens like the belly of the earth. Down until they’re sunk through rock and soil, blood and sinew, until they’re bathed in magma. A mouth opens. Speech begins to come.

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Steel By Roberta Lawson

She is writing up the business proposal: Excel and Word documents, razor-edged laminate folders, two hundred thousand cups of black coffee. The telephone shrills. Her parents – in flat tones – would like to buy her a house, a car, her parents would like to buy her. She bites so hard into her lip blood-drops form. Clutches the proposal tight as a baby. * * * He loves her. But it isn’t working. He loves her. The words are heavier and heavier on her. He loves her. Is there somebody else? He loves her. The only other person is herself. She’s beginning to think she overlooked that. She’s so broke. Is there anything he can do to help her? He wants to help her. He has only ever wanted to help her. She loves herself. She thinks perhaps she loves herself. If she gives love back to him, he’ll suck it into himself until she has nothing left, and he’ll be swollen. When she speaks, he hears distortions. When he speaks, her head begins to hurt. He wants to help her. She doesn’t want to be helped. I want to love you, he says. She knows the shape of this love, and she is drowning. She clutches the business proposal as if her life depends on it. You’re broke, he says. You need helping. Not from you, she says, not from you.

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Lotus by Roberta Lawson

In our palms, small talismans. In our palms, small found objects: a photo, a gemstone, a discarded note. Hand to hand we pass back and forth these tokens as substitutes for love. Here we do not mention the cold – our words are only for our own ears and we ration them carefully. Once a mute man placed a lotus flower in my hair, walked away. Once somebody’s mother took the earrings she was wearing, threaded them through my lobes. We share no common language of words. We make do. We better than make do.

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Bastet on the Down-Low by Roberta Lawson

1. They rub her belly, tickle her ears. When she growls, they chuckle. In her head she’s roaring. “What a cute meow” they say. They smile when she rubs against their legs. “Get the fuck out of my territory” she thinks, pawing at a houseplant. Laps at a face, recollecting the tang of mouse blood, and begins to purr. 2. Her fleecy basket is the leafy belly of a tree. In her dreams she springs from the tree and roars. She is her panther self again, the self she always has been. Emerald eyes narrow, ears arch, and she breathes in: forest – prey – danger – existence – the hunt is all these is. Drunk on jungle-scent, she runs and smaller beings disperse in panic. Jungle is her terrain, her playground. Shaking her head back and forth she bites into captured birds with relish; paw-swipes, cruelty, hunger mingling. Shimmies trees, lunges at insects, kicks, fights, roars –- “So cute” they say as she tosses in her basket. She’s not cute. She’s free.

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Root by Roberta Lawson

Transcendental meditation, (accidental astral projection,) past life regression, hypnosis. She’ll try anything – almost. Some days: anything. Just to remember the thing she has forgotten. The thing that must be, must be there; is scratching like flint against her relationships, is fragmenting her into splinters. The thing that should and needs to hurt (Her acupuncturist threads a needle into her sacral chakra – Does this hurt? – Yes.) She’s waiting to grieve. She’s hungry to grieve. That bigger hurt, the one that caused this split. The one she needs to recapture in order to become her whole self again. Instead of pain there’s a disengaged space. Instead of that memory she floats. That thing that happened – must have happened. It’s a taste in her mouth, the sensation just before waking. It’s the short sharp lightning strike that sets her teeth on edge. It’s the thing that – if only she could remember – might stop owning her.

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Pillow by Roberta Lawson

In another life, she was a sea-wave. His face creases up a little when she tells him this. He humours her. How did that feel? He sounds like a therapist. She thinks of clear arcs of orgasm washing over her. Of silver horses endlessly rippling forward. Of being a blue-green fluid arc – of just being – salty-fresh, imbued with oxygen. Of endlessly being and becoming – rippling, sparkling; reaching up and diving back under. How did that feel? He repeats, a little impatient. She sighs. It felt like nothing. Nothing he would understand.

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She Doesn’t Live Here by Roberta Lawson

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2001 The trees on these street are magnificent. Young families with dogs and prams walk happily down it. Here – number 77 – the house she almost bought. The rooms are large and airy. Her loom glorious in the sitting room. The overgrown garden. In her first year here, her business prospers. She acquires a boyfriend. Giddy dates, leading into a settled life. So much love. Friday night take-aways from the Indian restaurant on the corner. Saturday morning sex. Saturday afternoon Scrabble games and cinema trips. Friends laughter around the dining room table. A fat contented cat. Sunday brunches in the pub opposite. Autumn-leaf stomping in the woods down the road. The deer, the blackbirds, the quiet burial space. Sunshine picnics in the Summer, skimming stones in the river. 2011 The trees on this street are barren. Families hurry down it, huddled over prams. Rising damp stealthily climbing the large airy rooms. Her loom neglected in the corner. The recession hit her business hard, her boyfriend’s harder. Her worries hit the relationship harder still. His drinking didn’t help. Friday night anger. Saturday morning failed attempts at reconciliation. Saturday afternoon stagnation. Quiet around the dining room table. Sunday mornings watching the football in the pub, and staring into their drinks. Her boyfriend’s car backing away, a fat cat in the backseat. There’s the woods down the road. The thick green trees, the lazy river. There are the deer, the blackbirds, the burial space. There’s her tombstone.

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Gobstopper by Roberta Lawson

Mummy says I am: pretty as a princess, a child model to be. How I pose, how I prance, how I am praised. Let me tell you that my favourite things are the giddy glass jars of Harrods jellybeans brought back special the day after mum and dad’s trip to Amsterdam, the foot-long fizzing sherbet straws on Sunday afternoons, playground hopscotch, and that my boyfriend’s mouth tastes like tomato soup and sand. One day we’ll marry. He brings me roses and I press them between the pages of my memory book, smiling out of the window. Let me tell you about jam-jam-strawberry-jam-what-is-the-name-of-your-young-man. He is named Milo! Let me tell you about the wobbly rainbow bubbles from my bubble wand, about warm sudsy baths and mummy’s gentle touch on my hair as she washes it clean, eases out the knots. Let me tell you about the post office on Saturday mornings, how I dance from the awful line of waiting grandmas, how I am pretty as can be – I must be always pretty. And on the long grey windowsill lives a half-dead woodlouse, shiny black horrible. Let me tell you (not mummy, only you,) how I lift it in my hand, and how the woodlouse climbs inside of me – all wriggling legs, all tickly antennae. Let me tell you how the woodlouse makes its home – horrible black – down inside of me, pretty me. Some things I hardly tell anybody.

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Genesis By Roberta Lawson

I read that hyenas come out of the womb already fighting. In that sentiment I recognised you.

Inside me you kicked and cartwheeled– me bent double with nausea but still a strange smile on my face- convinced that after three boys, I had a female martial artist growing in my abdomen. The doctors muttered nervously about Caesarans. Your father took to pubs at night-time, late business meetings, more and more time stood outside smoking, and stopped quite meeting my eye. I wrapped my arms around the swollen drum of my belly and still I couldn’t stop smiling. Your brothers were grown already. From then, it’d be you and I.

November — you sprang from me, red-white and slippery, arched a finger at the world, drew a breath, exhaled– roared. And I thought yes – yes, this is what I’ve been waiting for.

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Prescriptive By Roberta Lawson

This room is their bedroom, only larger. Somehow it is every bedroom she has ever known. Outside this room are animals and movement and life. Inside this room a spill of boxes, shiny, sporting loopy bows. She will open these boxes, these are the sum of her luckiness. So she sets to ripping through layers of wrapping. Her fingers are clumsy. In one box she finds a new camera, glinting silver. Another, a set of tickets. The tickets grant entry to places, offer journeys. She cannot quite believe that she will ever fully leave this room. In other boxes she finds pet collars, designer animal foods. Still more; baby mobiles, names on waiting lists for school places. Names that don’t yet exist. More: books of recipes for meals she will one day cook. In others, sex toys, lingerie. Oh, she thinks, setting scenes in her mind.

Clothes. Hats boots hosiery swimsuits. A kind of uniform. She supposes there is an order to these boxes, that she could lay them out and follow them like a staircase, though if doing so would lead her from this room or further into it she is not sure.

There he is in the doorway. He is in his dressing gown, which must mean this is morning or some late late night hour. I’ve been so busy working, he says. He gestures to the sea of boxes.Working to get you all these things you wanted. She can’t remember what she wanted.

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Rib by Roberta Lawson

She smells like cinnamon. He tastes like sea-salt. Her hair is the colour of the apples on the trees. His is dark and curled, soft like animal down. When she strokes him, he purrs. In the mornings, evenings, they swim, emerge fresh and naked from untainted ocean. They tell one another they are the gods, goddesses, their laughter lazily rippling. They tell one another this is the beginning and do not laugh. Wrapped in one another, the world buzzes quietly around them. When they kiss they grow larger and he breathes: yes, we are the gods. Between her legs she is ripe red like pomegranate seeds. He reaches. She climbs atop him, asks: but wasn’t I second, smaller? Her fingers brush his rib-cage. He smells of lust and grass in the sunshine. He swells, tugging her over him. You are a goddess, he whispers. No such thing as smaller, second. The hot breath of the afternoon. Apples spill. She arches.

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