Waxing and Waning
The Mix: Rebirth
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Feature
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The Mix: Rebirth - Feature -
Images by Meghan Murphy
The cramping starts midway through the first course. One of the dinner guests spills his tomato soup and it blooms into a garden of poppies on the tablecloth. An unfurling deep in her pelvis, an aggressive expansion punctuated by crushing contractions.
A murmur of jumbled words and she discreetly leaves the table. In the bathroom she removes her pants and lowers herself into the shallow white tub, soothed by the cool porcelain container. She crouches down on flat feet, legs splayed, and wonders at the sudden rush and release from inside her. Between her feet lays a gelatinous sac; a roiling mass of swivelling eyeballs peer out of the mucous, pupils dilating. She picks up the slippery thing and feels the weight of an unblinking hundred-eye stare. It is unbearable … the unending subjection to the world with no rest behind lowered lids. She moistens a towel and gently lays it over all the eyes. Tucking in her offspring to a corner of the tub, she returns to the table as the entrée is served.
When the house sleeps, she returns to her all-seeing progeny. The moist membrane heaves and twists. Some eyes are covered in the milky film of age. These are the eyes of all the women she has ever been. She blinks. She realizes she is, and always has been, looking out into herself. Amongst the orbits of eyes, one is unmoving, staring up at her. She is held by the unwavering gaze and cannot bear seeing herself so wholly. She takes a toothpick from her pocket and stabs through the center of the offending eye. It whirls on its axis. She brings the speared planet up to her face and carefully places it in her mouth. It rotates, rolling along her tongue, and she swallows it whole. She is satiated in a manner that food could never nourish. Full. She perceives herself from the inside and revels in all that is dark, cavernous, grotesquely hers.
“These are the eyes of all the women she has ever been. She blinks. She realizes she is, and always has been, looking out into herself. ”
She scoops up the remaining organs of vision and walks into the night. When the moon steps out from the dark sky her precious cargo seems to sway in her arms, dancing a familiar lunar tune that affirms their solar lineage. Little moons, perched in skulls – givers of time, tides and light. She walks and walks. Her arms begin to feel heavy and yet she cannot stop until she reaches a place that will only make itself known once found. She enters the yawning mouth of a cave so dark she is certain she will be smothered. As the soft bottoms of her feet meet jagged rock, the eyeballs begin to glow. Each orb is now a waxing, waning or full moon illuminating the walls in cold, clear light. Finally the cave opens up and she is standing in a chamber of water, on the shores of an ocean expanding into darkness. She lowers her shining bundle into the edge of the water. When each eye meets the dark liquid there is a nearly imperceptible shiver … and then a glossy tail emerges. Now she watches as tadpoles of pure moonlight wriggle through the water; all the moons of her being rippling under the surface in a pool of infinite rebirth.
