The Lady of Chalk

Only one substance fascinates me more than gypsum, and that is chalk.

Calcium carbonate, constructor of cliffs, home of fossils and the imprinted remains of life aeons before our time. Put it on your hands and you can swing from rings and bars. Put it in your hand and you can write upon a blackboard and educate. Like the very word “literature” itself, it seems to create a taste in my mouth.

I met a woman made of chalk once. She was stately and very beautiful, but when I tried to hold her she crumbled, when I tried to kiss her she began to dissolve. Her skin was as white as porceline and smooth as the air, but beneath all was chaotic in structure; like the universe itself she was inconsistent. Sometimes she hurt to hold, and within her was fossilised all her cares and woes; a record of her history etched within her like rings in a tree.

She liked the sea more than anything else, and when we visited, she would wade in to the onrushing gunmetal grey tide and stand as proud as the cliff faces behind her, she was white, the formations behind her painted in iron red from where they were forced up from the ground to where they met the sky. The cries of gulls and kittiwakes bounced off them to where I was forced to bring wine out to her ten yards out, for she didn't want to get her feet dry again. She wouldn't eat, for she said everything would give her indigestion.

I looked after her, but every day she grew weaker and less integral. Every time she drank, it hurt, so she gave up fluids to go with the absence of food. When she walked her skeletal structure decayed more and more. She sat motionless at the kitchen dawn till dusk, jaw calcifying.

Her final words were her final wishes. I took her back to the sea, and left her there staring out towards Europe. She was gone with the next high tide.

I returned the next morning, to find nothing but “Thank You” written on the sand. For the next high tide to erase.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 05/09/13