Isobel Flynn
30-minute free-write exercise
Written in Bacton, Norfolk
There are thunderflies trapped behind the glass of the picture frame. They must have died against the plush storm, depicted by the vortex of charcoal clouds above the lighthouse. The storm looks like the deranged hair of some interplanetary soothsayer, bearing down on the garish stripes of the lighthouse: first, she makes them bleak. Then, she makes them bleed.
Lightning is gaily unflinching in the foreground. Studying the picture, I finger caves into my languid braid. I spend a dominant amount of time mimicking storms. I inherited my grandmother’s discreet vial of thunder, which dangles from my neck on a brass chain. Lightning trickles like serum down the back of my throat when my mother kisses me goodnight. I listen with morbid attentiveness — and secretive intent — to matriarchal stories of Shankill Road.
Isobel Flynn and her insatiable magnetism towards line-dancing and protestant rogues when her husband was away with the army. I imagine Izzie as a staid whirlwind; she sheds her obligations like taffeta, like ungainly clusters of cometdust. They only slow her down. The showy crust of her dress blurs the irresistible drag of her caverns — in that crumbling village hall, there is an entire solar system gravitating around her, bewitched towards the centre’s bloody crush.
Like Isobel Flynn, I am a woman with caves, their walls cosmic with the bunting of disintegrating country lanes and gales and ozone. The windchimes on the barn gate tinkle warily when I fiddle with my earrings. I lay absent-minded waste to your county. I fly kites, red and open as daydreaming mouths, over untillable fields.
Drag your hands along the hem of my most nonchalant altars, stacked with hooves and wool and patchworked sun and moon; feel for yourself that I am real. Have faith that my caves are stiller tombs.
M. J. Severn
2022
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