I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three… nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn’t see a single pole beyond the nineteenth.
—Sylvia Plath
An imaginary girl runs along a road at night, her red hair flying in the wind. None of the dust sticks to her feet. She lives in a derelict barn near the marsh and speaks to the crows.
~
I walk along the lane next to the marsh, the same one from childhood. I am five or six. My father is further ahead, out of sight. The narrow road stretches into the mist. My father is lost in thought, forgetting I am there.
We go on the walk every night like clockwork. My sister and I, my father, and our dog Candy, with the soft velvet ears. My mother never comes because her nerves are worn thin, frayed from years of scrubbing and polishing, and fighting with my father. She stays in the house, standing at the kitchen counter, glass trembling in her hand. She wipes a plate with an old tea towel—soft, slow, absent strokes. Later, she will retreat to her room at the end of the house, where twilight and despair fall around her, and flecks of dust turn to gold. On bad days, she remains there, curtain drawn against the world.
~
In the daytime, the sky is low and grey, pressing over everything in a ghostly fog. Gulls wheel overhead toward the sea.
The marsh stretches out to an unknown distance. Because I am small, I can only see the grasses and reeds, thin lines of bright greens and crimson reds.
“If you walk in, you’ll sink,” my father says. “You’ll struggle to get out.”
The salt marsh is filled with quicksand, ready to swallow us whole. The ground is soft and unstable, waterlogged in layers of silt and salt, scattered with driftwood and reeds.
I want to walk in, up to my waist, just until my feet begin to sink. My dress would gather around me, coming to life, floating on the surface like petals.
~
Rain-wet nettles. Wild blackberries in sweet mouthfuls, turning our fingertips blue-red. Cord grass and sea lavender—names I had learned from a Ladybird book.
The books did not cover all subjects, like the blanketing feeling at the edge of the day, or my mother’s turbulent moods. They began in the late afternoon when my father did not return. First a small blue pill from the bottle next to the bed. Then she crouches on one knee, reaching into the dark wardrobe for another small dark bottle.
We walk along the marsh, to where the lane becomes a dirt footpath, next to wide green fields, close to an abandoned farm.
When would my mother wake up? Would she leave as she always said she would?
~
Cattails. Reed grass. Small birds flitting through the shadows. Nightingales came out at dusk but I didn’t fully recognize their songs. I listened for clear whistles, trills and gurgles. The notes were high pitched and throaty.
Whir-li-whir.
Whit-whit-whit.
Pip-pip-pip.
In a notebook, I practiced writing out the songs of the birds that lived at the marsh, copying them down like spells.
Caw! Caw! Caw!
~
To reach the marsh, we took the Donkey Steps. I can’t remember why they had that name. Perhaps donkeys once walked up and down them. I thought this was somehow connected to the Little Donkey song we sang at school.
The steps began in a high place, grouped in sets of five, tangled with brambles. Each night we made our way down, I counted them, believing there were one hundred all together. But I always lost count because I was afraid to slip and fall.
Alongside the steps, there was an old granite building, or part of a building because some of it had disappeared, leaving only the remains of a crumbling brick wall. Ivy crept through the sandstone mortar, softened in the rain.
I remember the play of light through the leaves, and the raindrops.
Dark broken windows were built into the wall. The glass was thick with dust, cobwebs in the corners. I couldn’t see through them even though I kept trying because I wanted to know what was on the other side.
I wondered if it opened to another world, gentler than the one I lived in. What if I belonged there instead?
A cracked gutter sagged with the weight of years of heavy rain and fallen leaves, gathering and slowly breaking down.
A roof was pitched steeply into darkness. Lichen and moss grew on the surface, muted green and silvery blue. Pale green star-like clusters shimmered in the light.
The rain continued. The stars became flowers in the dampness, slowly growing in the silence.
On the way home from the marsh, light stretched long into the evening, soft and gold.
~
Opposite the marsh, there was a line of old, abandoned cars—rusted through, with leaves stuck in their fenders. Tree branches twisted and bent, as if growing into them. The cars had not been driven in years; their windshields were smeared with grime. Each time we passed them, I was terrified. My sister often had to hold my hand or even run me past them while I covered my eyes.
When I was older, seven or eight, I started to stop to peek inside: a cracked vinyl seat, a faded map. I only had a few moments to explore.
Time had worn through the boundary of memory and other lives had seeped through, the way a ghost slips into a house and moves from room to room.
An imaginary girl often sat in the backseat, one hand twirling one strand of hair. Her bare legs dangled out of the open door, swinging idly above the ground. She didn’t look at anything in particular—just stared out, as if waiting for something or someone who never arrived.
