What a thrill ---My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone Except for a sort of hinge Of Skin, A flap like a hat, Dead white. Then that red plush, spilling onto the pale flesh. Plath (1962) The build up below the surface suddenly exploded, a struggle against the 80mph onset and flash of intense pain. The currents accumulated, streams progressing into tidal waves. Anonymous
forces were at play, tunneling through each bend with increasing strength, deluging through the veins and past the rocks where I stood looking over the Cornish landscape. The body I stood on was made up of millions-of-years -old organisms that had once belonged in the sea. The pigment of the limestone saturated the rock below and gradually bled out into the ground that met the dead grass and weeds, running for a few hundred feet before dropping back into the sea again. That rock had taken millions of years to make it this far from the water, only for my line of vision
Is It That I Cannot See Myself? Alice Cooke alicecooke.net info@alicecooke.net 10
to push it instantly back to where it came from. I couldn’t bend too far to see past the edge of the cliff; never trust the body of Eve.