Scroll/Dive - F.E. Clark
11.32pm, sleep has not come, I scroll: street lights rippling on the duck pond in Reykjavik; a feather waves in the breeze on an empty osprey’s nest in a Scottish highland glen; offerings are stalled in-progress on Submittable; the flash of red tail lights of a lone vehicle in the M8 Charing X Tunnel. Hands claw-jointed, clutching my connection to infinity, I ache for distraction, for connection—for sleep.
Sitting on the wide sill of a second floor window of the old farmhouse, alone, there’s no-one else at all. The window is hoisted high, held open with a stick. It’s not night, but neither is it day. I don’t know how it came, but water fills the entire valley below, it laps gently on the walls of the house.
01.03 am, awake, blue lit I tap: Chernobyl status is 1.14568046904% safe; on Rockall Island the current wave height at the K5 Buoy is 2.7 metres; microlites swarm over Anaheim; the view of the Earth from the International Space Station passes slowly; a lightning storm flickers in the Philippine Sea off Tokyo. The sweat of miniscule degrees of change ripples through cyberspace, and my seeking heart.
Drifting—in my dream all is calm. The burn, fields, road, garden, and the lower floor of the house are all submerged. Nothing moves, except small flashes of the exotic birds: red and yellow and green and blue. They flit among the tops of trees, which are all that be seen of the pines above the water. The strange voices of the birds echo up to me.
03.17am in my insomniac bubble, I observe: flight paths of light aircraft over Svalbard in the Barents Sea; wireless balloons suspended over Peru; a parcel lost on its way from a depot to here. Sleep-grit in my eyes, my blood beats with the flickering of impossibility.
Finally, at dawn, just when I’m supposed to rise, I fall deeply. I stand on the sill and thrust my arms out above my head, arrow my body. Dive. Into the green I go. Out, with joy, among the iridescent fishes.
*
Originally published, in print only, in Ellipsis Zine 9-Life Safari, 2021
It’s rumoured that F. E. Clark is currently writing the third draft of her first novel, living her goth girl autumn/winter, and mourning the ashes of her year-gone paintings. She lives in Scotland. Inspired by nature in all its forms, she tweets photos/diaries her daily-ish walks #FromMyWalk. With a story on the Best Fifty British and Irish Flash Fiction 2019-2020 list, she is a 2 x Pushcart, and Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions nominee. Her poetry, flash-fiction, and short stories can be found in anthologies and literary magazines, including: Bulb Culture Collective, 404 Ink, Matchbook, Retreat West, Cheap Pop, Poems for All, SNACK Magazine, Molotov Cocktail, The Wild Hunt, Spelk, Bending Genres, Kissing Dynamite. Her most recent work is out in: Soor Ploom Press, Micro Podcast, The Eemis Stane, and anthologies about Joan Eardley, Bob Dylan, and chronic pain. More details can be found on her website, www.feclarkart.com, and she tweets intermittently at @feclarkart.
