wattle - no one special, just a dreamer who found an old pen.

Life has not been especially grand these last three years. I’ve slowed considerably and am just a shell of the person I used to be. I lay here; a display, on display. Those with a flair for mathematics would instantly note that I’ve been reduced to a cluster of the 206 basic pieces lain out in a seductively romantic pattern to allure spectators into pondering the unattainable. These days it’s important for me not to romp around, it would result in my falling apart taking on the appearance of a random pattern and almost certainly involve putting a foot in my mouth. OK, so there is a 207th piece to me, my brain is kept in a formaldehyde filled jar, on the top shelf in the specimen room just out of sight of my other 206 components. I still feel the chill blowing through the empty cavity in my pelvis on cold winter nights, and the joy of a soft kid glove sliding along my femur when the staff offer maintenance. It wasn’t always like this.

At a very early age I started to lose pieces of myself. The first to go was my virginity it was not the experience I had intended; a sporting accident on the trampoline, I was still very young just twelve, and attempting a two and a half summersault with pike. It didn’t go well, I lost my way and came down heavily, feet first straddling the springs on the edge causing considerable discomfort. I was out of control and flung back into the air finding a final resting place in a collision with the miniature ‘statue of liberty’ the family brought back from the United States. My mother was furious and blamed my father for the whole event, she argued the case well. He had no right placing the offending object in close proximity to the trampoline and should accept full responsibility. It took ages to find the missing torch arm, a nurse was first to twig where it might be and after a doctor found it I made a quick and full recovery. Although my secret desire to marry a sheik and live in a harem was shattered, what with my never being able to pass the entrance examination.

Next to go was my heart, I was a teenager and had several romantic encounters in quick succession. Guys just seem to enjoy using, breaking and discarding things. At first I thought it was only physical, like the branch of a tree, a rear view mirror off the nearest car or some old lady’s letterbox. Eventually I realised through painful experience they did it to everything, my heart snapped and I was unable to feel anything of them again.

My liver and kidneys very quickly followed as I turned to alcohol for comfort. I had taken my seventeenth Bloody Mary and was about to the bite the lemon after my ninth tequila when I slipped silently to the floor. My last mortal memory was looking up everyone’s dress wondering why I didn’t realise before I was the only person on earth who wore underwear on Saturday night.

The rest was academic, in the mortuary they took to me with large ‘garden’ implements. Some disgusting medical student with a flare for electronics took my breasts home mounting one as a doorbell and the other by his bed as a touch lamp. Jennifer somehow finished up with my eyes. She had one elegantly mounted on a gold chain and wears it around her neck, always, even making love. It still gives her a small thrill to imagine my blank stare while clamped in cleavage. The other eye she uses as a talking point, putting it in the jar with the black jellybeans to inhibit party animals grabbing large handfuls. She has lost count how many times my eye has been spat across the room. Sandra also wears my ears on a neck chain, for luck. My hair she has had fashioned into a Kitchener Moustache which she never fails to display as a party accessory, high and low.