A Girl with a Red Scarf

November 24th, 2009

I saw this girl on the bus early Sunday morning after too little sleep.  What I saw in her probably says more about me than about her.

Her hair was cut at her chin, striving for a kind of boldness, but its whisps and curls made it fragile and uncertain, slipping down around her face as she leaned over her cell phone, drifting along the collar of her quilted black jacket.  She was clothed in blackness wholly, in black leather gloves and black wool skirt and black silk stockings and black patent shoes, and then, like blood, the redness of the scarf that split her blackness almost to the waist, a huge and ghastly incision, a wound that she had long ago given up trying to close, though her gloved hands, leathered and black, kept fluttering up, convulsively, to brush at the redness that spilled from her coat and chest, then down again to her skirt and tights, then up again to the colour oozing at her throat.  She is dipping her fingers in blood, I thought, to write her incantations, hesitant and wavering, on her arms and stomach and thighs, to inscribe the wards, now long belated, of her protection.

Posted in Prose | 5 Comments »

5 Responses to “A Girl with a Red Scarf”

  1. Curtis Healy Says:
    November 24th, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    Very enjoyable, though as soon as you leave the line, ‘ghaslty incision’, which is very powerful imagery, it loosens up, it’s not as tight, perhaps something ambiguous, for instance, ‘a wound she would dress and redress and readdress constantly’ up until you mention ‘incantations’ following ‘incision’ it seems to unravel, but the incantation brings it back home quite a bit.

  2. jeremylukehill Says:
    November 24th, 2009 at 5:02 pm

    Curtis,

    The change in style and pace after “like blood” is intentional. Until that point, the girl herself is ordered and whole. After it, she is wounded and bleeding. The different styles of description are meant to reflect this difference.

  3. Curtis Healy Says:
    November 24th, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    Perhaps a different image than incision is needed then, though it is very good, it’s striking, it is very medical and surgical and leaves a train of thought from that point on that seems, as you say, might be contradictory to you intent.

  4. Curtis Healy Says:
    November 24th, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    I understand that you want something disordered in the voice now, even clunky and messy as to her behaviour, but the mentions of blood and ooze in that way just seem tired, already used if you get my meaning.

  5. Lauren Says:
    November 26th, 2009 at 11:35 am

    I quite liked this. I once saw a woman wearing a lemon-yellow raincoat & rainboots on a sunny day that had a similar effect on me.

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