Jean’s Theory of Everything
She asks them to leave the door open and from her bed calls
the garden in. A brash wind is the first guest bringing a party
of others: soil, leaves that frill the skirting, smells and rubbish
make themselves at home. The roof gives up, lets the rain join in
and through frail panes the sun sits a while, empty handed.
Slugs traipse all night across her floor. She thinks they’re fat
and what a waste of time making a marathon trip only to be burst
by the beaks of birds, to slouch to sticky puddles. Seeds scatter
themselves like poor punctuation, taking root in the rug. Soon
green shoots poke through, and worms doing morning yoga.
By winter the lens of her eye has a coating of ice, giving her
a convex gaze. Now she can see the microcosm of things:
parasites living on the hairs of mice, and the architecture
of skin. Nature is a grafter, she grants it that; its work
cut out just keeping tabs on all those leptons and quarks.
She feels much better when gravity lifts, like a hospital blanket
it was too heavy and not very warm. On discovering she is curled
around other dimensions, her vertigo disappears and it explains
that recent trouble with word search. She’s also comforted to learn
her tinnitus was actually Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.
Jean networks with dark matter and finds him to be a nice chap
holding down a job. She has yet to meet dark energy but no wonder,
the expansion of the universe is a thankless task. She can empathise
with this as she moved house many times before her fifth child
was born. Then Jim had the op and the extension was built.
Now she’s on the Nomenclature Committee, as the physicists lacked
an adult approach. She feels like the Queen every time a quantum
discovery sails off with the title she gives it. Inspirations include
martial arts and founding members of the W.I. She considers
her other poor selves working dead-end jobs in alternate universes.
At night she could watch the nebulae for hours. She prefers them
to soaps and feigns shock as they sow their stellar seed into space as if
it never happened in her day. Constellations flick past like an album
of old photographs; she reminisces about light when it was young.
It is around this time Jean conceives her Theory of Everything.
‘Jean’s Theory of Everything’ © Vicki Husband. ‘Jean’s Theory of Everything’ first published in Gutter #7 (Freight, 2012).
She asks them to leave the door open and from her bed calls
the garden in. A brash wind is the first guest bringing a party
of others: soil, leaves that frill the skirting, smells and rubbish
make themselves at home. The roof gives up, lets the rain join in
and through frail panes the sun sits a while, empty handed.
Slugs traipse all night across her floor. She thinks they’re fat
and what a waste of time making a marathon trip only to be burst
by the beaks of birds, to slouch to sticky puddles. Seeds scatter
themselves like poor punctuation, taking root in the rug. Soon
green shoots poke through, and worms doing morning yoga.
By winter the lens of her eye has a coating of ice, giving her
a convex gaze. Now she can see the microcosm of things:
parasites living on the hairs of mice, and the architecture
of skin. Nature is a grafter, she grants it that; its work
cut out just keeping tabs on all those leptons and quarks.
She feels much better when gravity lifts, like a hospital blanket
it was too heavy and not very warm. On discovering she is curled
around other dimensions, her vertigo disappears and it explains
that recent trouble with word search. She’s also comforted to learn
her tinnitus was actually Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.
Jean networks with dark matter and finds him to be a nice chap
holding down a job. She has yet to meet dark energy but no wonder,
the expansion of the universe is a thankless task. She can empathise
with this as she moved house many times before her fifth child
was born. Then Jim had the op and the extension was built.
Now she’s on the Nomenclature Committee, as the physicists lacked
an adult approach. She feels like the Queen every time a quantum
discovery sails off with the title she gives it. Inspirations include
martial arts and founding members of the W.I. She considers
her other poor selves working dead-end jobs in alternate universes.
At night she could watch the nebulae for hours. She prefers them
to soaps and feigns shock as they sow their stellar seed into space as if
it never happened in her day. Constellations flick past like an album
of old photographs; she reminisces about light when it was young.
It is around this time Jean conceives her Theory of Everything.
‘Jean’s Theory of Everything’ © Vicki Husband. ‘Jean’s Theory of Everything’ first published in Gutter #7 (Freight, 2012).
