Civil Slavery (excerpt from A Version of You)

Perpetual partying can really weigh heavily upon a dearly departing bag of bones.
Juggling the last few weeks of my time in England had somehow become a circus within itself. Circles of social prospects breathed out fire upon the audience of my life. Affable bodies were charred with the black enigmas of Not Enough. Familiar pupils were widened by the amber glow of insatiability as the fire turned into gold, and their desires would always want more of me. Work commitments balanced on a tightrope above, wobbling and wavering under the weight of an evicted responsibility; they leaned with a casual carelessness that wore brightly-coloured socks, frizzy hair, and a clown’s red nose of redemption.
The final organisational touches for travel were like hot potatoes in my hands. Connections; check… chuck. Travel insurance; check… chuck. Giving away everything that I had, except that in which I could take upon my back; check… chuck. My travel preparations were thrown out to the wind by scorched, ruby fingertips that had habitually pressed down 5am alarms with an ambience of the greater good upon them. The necessity in continuity of motion had never been more apparent. That Necessity sat in the quiet of the kitchen with me, though we did not speak. It was a necessity that wound its long, careful fingers around the sausage rolls of my packed clothing. Fabrics rolled their frayed edges back and forth between desire and need. As tenants of a retired, red Duke of Edinburgh backpack, my clothes were evicted for reconsideration without sentiment, before being submerged once more into the darkness, alongside fewer garments than before. There sat with me a soft necessity that needed to consider the versatility of numerous eye shadows and underwear. There were mermaid lagoon eyes that fought for a place against the unweighted nudity that I knew would also find my skin. Silky undergarments that were hungry for browned buttocks looked nervously up at me from atop their piles; knowing that my derriere also desired the undressed freedom of swooshing around in the commando jungle of liberation.
Those same buttocks sat upon the cold tiles of my kitchen floor, a tiled floor that pushed cool air up into my skin, leaving me with cheap thrills. It was a tile floor that did not actually feel anything like a tile floor at all. It wore fake, plastic squares with diamonds pressed inside of their impersonations. Amidst my detailed daydreams, the oven broke the silence, attempting to heat away the fake that had joined me and the quiet necessity, for there was no real heating in my empty kitchen. Still, I began to defrost, and tried to entertain the idea that my destination could ever hold temperatures above the freezing English air. Winter held me captive, and the illusion of the sun mocked my subconsciously-packed woolly socks and jumpers. The Duke of Edinburgh rucksack laughed to himself with a fabricated tongue that hung down lazily beside a necklace tag; it read: ‘Destination Asia.’
I looked around at the soft walls of my little one-bedroom, bottom-story flat. My winter retreat. Our lovers den. Mould crept up the ivory walls like aged vines of untamed ivy. The Duke propped his scarlet fabrics up against the sofa bed like a drunk who had forgotten to pack his last legs… and sombrely, he looked upon the clothes that hadn’t quite made the cut. I admired the smallness of a kitchen that encircled me in the pit of its square belly and I rested my fingers upon its edges, as if to show quiet gratitude.
I knew that my dreams had been born from that kitchen’s cold, plastic tiles. They had been summoned from the colourless kettle that lived a solitary life within its own quiet kitchen corner, where it birthed for us hot tea and dreams of warm summer skin. Together, we had eaten toast with Marmite in the early hours of darkness before work, and then toasted late into the night, when we had all eventually gathered our tired bones and returned home. There stood three fragile glasses that constantly touched towards our future adventures. They clinked with our unified desire to be reckless, to have fun, and to enter a life that was a far cry from the schedules and governing clocks of this one. In that kitchen, we cooked our Sunday roasts at 3am on a Tuesday evening and imagined our Great Escape.
With one foot in this world, while the other dangled in another world of unknowns, my imagination began to sketch itself into the first pencil outlines of a reality. Winter ghosts chased away the cold draught of my transitions. The circus act of my fleeting life was a jester’s best work.

Written by April Lee Fields