Leafless Pines

An Extract From: Let Helen Like Snow

Bring the water to a boil, leave the hob on a high heat whilst doing so. As the water bubbles, bring the heat down. Simmer the water. Stare into the bubbles, watch them fold around the edge of the pan, watch them explode within other bubbles as they collide with the slippy teflon interior of the IKEA bought cooking utensil. Simmering, but still boiling. Touch the handle, does it feel too hot to touch? It will be soon. Stare into the bubbles some more. Look at them! Look at the way they dance. Imagine each bubble is a city. Within each bubble lives a colony, a civilisation, ideas, people. No. Imagine each bubble a planet. Rotating, firing, shooting up from the bottom of the pan to the top. At the mercy of the teflon and the heat. The heat, low but still boiling. Bubbling water. Distinguish between each bubble. Look closely and you’ll see no two are ever the same; they’re different sizes, shapes, they move and jive to different rhythms. You wish you could dance as well as these bubbles, don’t you? They’re like raindrops - which you should also watch. Watch them race down the window. Watch them hit the glass at top speed, watch them slither and slide and evaporate. Eyes back on the bubbles. They’re trying to escape the pan! Froth. Steamy, white, rising froth. Closing in on the border of the teflon cauldron. Now turn the heat down some more. They fall, pathetically so. Back where they came from. Now add the pasta, and watch as it expands, absorbs, softens.

Your rucksack is in the corner. It sits, dishevelled, abandoned, dumped. Recall the sensation of it slipping from your shoulder. Recall the way the strap made your bare arm sting as it tugged at your fragile hairs. Bits of plastic and velcro against your body. It kind of hurts now that you think about it. Now look at the rucksack, a pile of your things in a fabric container.

Now look at the stars, between intervals of clouds, whence the raindrops once came. There are just so damn many of them. Too many to comprehend, to appreciate. Remember being a child. Remember looking at those same stars. Remember how they shot across the sky, how they too danced, how they too bubbled and fizzed and jived and moved. Oh, how they moved. How they moved you! Look closely at the dark half of the crescent moon and you can still make out the rest of its shape. That blew your mind the first time you saw it. It’s just light and shadows, at the end of the day. Now observe your half crescent smile in the mirror, not smiling for any other reason than to check if there’s a bit of that pasta between your front two teeth. There is. Use your tongue to fish it free, to dig it out, to unlodge it. One tiny, fractured, crumb of pasta between your teeth is enough to ruin your entire appearance. You never had braces, but maybe you needed them. Now look at your face. Your eyes. Your nose. Your moonless smile. Teeth eclipsed by cracked lips. Cracked enough to stop the birds from singing on the first day of spring. Which today technically is, by the way. Not that you’d notice, given the fact that the stars are no longer visible at all anymore.

Theo emptied the rucksack onto the table. A plastic disposable water bottle, an empty tupperware container, and his lanyard. The objects lay strewn over the surface as he washed up the saucepan, bashing its handle against the sides of the sink, which was just about too small for comfort. His arms were burning as he scrubbed ferociously, scrapes of teflon mixed into the murky waters as he swilled away the remnants of his dinner.

Nothing ever happens.

Theo wandered beneath the leafless pines, dot to dot trunks forming electric overhead connections, once burdened with carrying forth the messages, to friends he no longer had.