Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks March 2015: Identity | Page 22

Sometimes, she feels like telling Nessa about her life, but it’s so fragmented she
can’t even graft it together herself. So all of her stories are about endings. An ending
is something she can make perfect; it’s solid.
They’re lying together, in the uncountable hours of the night. It’s dark, and Will’s
not sure if she can see it, the way Nessa’s chest must be moving, stuttering. She
might be picturing it just because she knows it’s there. ‘I read something today about
Mercury; did you know it’s shrinking? It’s cooling down, so close to the sun and it’s
getting colder. The surface is covered in cracks and wrinkles now; the landscape is
literally folding in on itself. The smallest planet, getting even smaller.
‘I guess that’s what always happens, right? Things just get smaller. If you’ve seen
those ancient bodies in museums they’re always like that, everywhere. Europe and
Egypt and South America, all as tiny and wrinkled as each other. We just aren’t good
at taking up space.’
*
This, all of it, is an accidental resurrection; just what she didn’t want to find, where
she didn’t want to find it.
Her mother presumes Will is a boy, when Nessa first mentions her. When they meet,
when she sees comely lips and mellow eyes, Eva immediately seems more comfortable.
She pulls Nessa aside to whisper to her; ‘I was worried when you mentioned a new
friend. I’m glad it’s just platonic.’
Platonic. Her mind isolates that word, catches and holds it like a small thing she’s
afraid of hurting. She tries to feel it’s history, a way around the definition that’s pushing
her into a corner. She hates it, and still she isn’t sure she can let it go; decide to