There was something about the whole thing that still made her BigKidExcited, she was giddy with the bright lights and the noise and the crowds and the bonfires. She liked to stroll amongst the groups, and stand in a transfixed tripping reverie, admiring the efflorescence, the silvery spikes and sprays spreading out across ink blue, images that seemed to burn on the retina, that were still there flashing if she closed her eyes. It was perhaps akin to the loveliness epileptics feel that can make them force their fits in quick succession just for that moment of high. Standing there, outside, the air so cold it felt like your skin was bruising in it. Your purpled face could just peel back and reveal a new you, some strangely exotic new fruit. All that ooohing and ahing, that exhilaration coursing through your veins. The prancing pyrotechnic posies. The delicious smell of gunpowder and burning wood. A wartime sense of togetherness and that bang bang bang of gunfire and explosives and with each bang came the rushing thrill you gained from not being dead. A dodged bullet. A gun pointed at your head that shoots flowers. Colourful blooms that fill the sky and your heart with joy. That cleaned the messy scribbles of your life slate back to black. It was when she felt most alive and romantic. That anything was possible. Anything at all. Now it was a feeling she wanted and needed to get back to but then, the last time... well, it was the worst possible time to have run into him. She was always slamming into him at the worst whooshbanging of times. It had been her undoing. It had driven her back to workaholic mode. Anything to fill the time. To stop the gap, the gaping hole of not being with him. Slamming into him was like rubbing that newly peeled layer of skin in salt. Caustic. The experience cut off her eyelids and burned her up, spinning, flaming. It exploded a buzz of noise in her head that drowned out the fireworks. It made everything hit her harder, the sensations of cold, of bruising, the wind knocked out of her and whipping all around them, her ears rang at the sight of him, eyes smarted from the touch of him. She knew she should turn, should run fast away from him but she was fixed to the spot. A Penny for the Guy. She was acutely aware of his every molecule, she sponged him up, she shadowed his movements. She vanished with him. Now she was vanishing from him. She took in the view, for perhaps the last time. Below her the dunes faded out towards the sea. From plush lush splodges of deep forest green to sage and rosemary, less foliage, more tracks. The gorse barely flowered. Jellyfish strung the tide line into a gleaming jewel necklace – topaz brown, ink blue. The sun machine drying them out to shrivelled discs with burst bellies; stingless frisbees. The only natural things she could see, glinting like disbelieving eyes amongst a clutter of plastic tit-for-tat; the banned landfill, the dumped-by-night. She sighed and stubbed out her cigarette on the pavement. Got to her feet, gave the bay one last glance before she started walking inland and uphill. She was moving to higher ground. She didn’t know if the sea levels were actually rising by any dramatic level. She didn’t know what to believe anymore. She needed a change of perspective. A strong, solid base. She was real-life 46
THE LAMPETER REVIEW - Issue 3 - May 2011