By morning the dusting of late-night snow has grown into a spectacular snowstorm. In the corner the radio is playing static, and I adjust the volume knob. Don’t look at me like that: it’s not like it tells me things. It’s just white noise.
I need a stamp for this letter. In my dream last night my mother’s face was close to mine and her eyes were bloodshot and there was spittle on her lips, and she shouted about the letter: why hadn’t it come yet? I woke up.
Something strange has been happening lately: I can feel fuzzy childhood memories snapping back into focus, like somebody’s god adjusting a microscope. Age eleven, I bashed my knee on the rough pavement with a scooter and blood gushed everywhere, and today the memory is so vivid I feel it could have happened yesterday, or just a minute ago. In bed, I actually check my knee for signs of injury and find none, and then wonder whether I’m misremembering–I think maybe I hurt my thigh, or elbow, and then I am not satisfied until I have checked my whole body for evidence of a fifteen-year-old scrape.
More recent memories, inversely, are melting away with alarming pace. The other day I couldn’t remember whether I’d showered yet or not and had to check that my hair was wet to confirm I had. But then I couldn’t remember if I’d used soap, or whether my hair was just wet from rain.
I can’t remember feeling like this before, but does that mean that this is new? Or do I just keep forgetting it?
There is a dead stable fly on my windowsill. I don’t know how it got in, or when it died, just that it’s belly-up on the chipped white ledge and its spindly legs are splayed like tree branches.
Stamps. Yes. Ok. I’m wiggling my toes. I feel like it would be normal to get multiple stamps, but I only need one. But what if I need more in the future? Does anyone even send letters anymore? Is it normal to buy one stamp? I think the clerk will look at me pathetically if I ask for one stamp. God, and then there’s the class postage–first class, second. I’m tempted to get first class, because in my dream mother really was stressed, but what’s the price difference? I can feel the imaginary clerk’s eyes boring into me as I decide–so vivid, wide brown irises and bushy eyebrows furrowed at my indecision. His face feels like a memory. Have I gone already? I search the desk for stamps. Nothing. I write in pen on my hand: STAMPS, in case I get confused again.
Dressing now–I pull up a pair of pants only to be met at my hips with fabric–I have on two pairs somehow: have I just put on both? Or is one from last night? I take off both, I put a new pair of pants on.
Next, trousers, socks, shoes. A shirt. Tucked, untucked, socks mismatched. I can’t worry about that now. My shoes are grey with mud, right here in my room. Has someone else been wearing them? I blink and they are clean again. I look at my hand: STAMPS.
When I was younger, we lived near a farm with sheep and horses and chickens. One winter day on the way to school, I saw a bay horse thrashing about on the ground. I’d never seen anything like it–feet kicking empty air, horseshoes glinting in the sun. It was one of those bright winter days that looked like a painting, and the sun shone like a spotlight over the horse. I peered through the fence rail to look as the muscles in its neck moved like agitated snakes, and its nostrils flared as it breathed, grunting and braying something awful. No one else was around.
That evening at dinner my mother told me the horse had coliced, and the farmer had had to put it down right there in the field. It was a tragedy because the farmer was out a good deal of money and racing season was starting soon. That kind of worldview made no sense to me as a child, but it does now.
Is it that late already? STAMPS.
I have my keys. I can feel them in my pocket. As I squeeze them to confirm, the metal teeth bite into my palm. That’s not a metaphor, I can feel them piercing my skin like disembodied fangs. I pull my palm out and it’s scraped, bleeding freely. I blink. No. My hand is in my pocket, and my keys are cold and still.
I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not fair. You’re not allowed to be more scared of me than I am.
In the street a man in a green coat barks at me. A truck sprays sludge on the pavement, and some of it seeps into my socks. Someone has pinned up paper snowflakes in their shop window, but you can barely see them in this storm. They’re so fragile and clean. I’ve tried to make my own before and they always turn out looking like some Rorschach test. Maybe my scissors are no good. There’s no reason to read into that.
My stomach groans, and I feel as though there are maggots there, roiling in my stomach acid and slithering up my intestines. I shouldn’t have left the house. I close my eyes, picture myself back in my room, with the sound of static and the smell of dust, and the dead fly on the ledge. Instead, I will my legs forward, feel the sidewalk salt crack beneath my heels.
Watch it! someone shouts, and I open my eyes. I am in the road. A car’s grill is one foot away from my nose. Move! The voice says again, belonging to a man with thick eyebrows and brown eyes, leaning out of his car window. There is a terrified woman in his passenger seat. I step back, and as he passes, I feel the woman’s eyes on me, wide and moon-like.
I shuffle to the post office. At the desk a woman looks at me strangely, as if I were a wild thing. She has eyebrows so blond they disappear into her porcelain skin, and her lips are thin and waxy. I give her my practiced request: 5 stamps please. 1st or 2nd class? She asks, and then, domestic or global? I had anticipated this interrogation, but still it makes me uneasy. Whichever is cheapest, I say. Well, are you sending letters abroad? I am agitated now. What’s it to her where they go? I repeat myself. Whichever is cheapest.
She gives me another long look while she reaches for the stamps. I fumble for the cash in my pocket because my fingers are numb. She raps her nails on the desk and purses her lips. This continues for an eternity, as I fish for a slippery fiver and she sucks in air through her nose. Finally, I grasp a note and push it towards her, slide the stamps into my pocket. She’s ringing it up on a register now but I am already pushing past the customers at the doorway, heart throbbing in my throat. Outside I gasp and inhale.
The day is so white my retinas burn, and my body welcomes the snow. The sludge on my shoes has iced over, crystallised as constellations on a cracked leather night sky. I reach for the door of the post office to retrieve my change, but it is locked–the shop inside is dark and empty, and the thick padlock inside winks at me.
In the freezer burn my brain is finally alive again, and I feel my mind return to itself: it was my palms that I had scraped on that pavement at eleven. I showered yesterday with olive soap and dried myself with the blanket on my bed. The street lamps are burning globes against a wave of snow, and I have five blue stamps in my pocket, which I cannot feel. My feet have gone numb also, so I sit on the pavement outside the post office. The bay horse’s mane tangles in my hands as his breathing slows and his bloodied guts spill across the frosted grass. The farmer’s face is solemn as he returns inside with his rifle, and at dinner my mother tells me there was nothing else to be done. My mother is four years gone now, there is no letter to send, and I wear no coat.