John Biscello

In the fairy tale the young girl slept for a long time and when she woke up she was old. She saw her old self in the mirror and was horrified, but also accepting. And a little in love. I am a little in love with this hag, may I call you that, I love myself (a little) because I am an old woman wrapped in old woman skin with old woman body parts and old woman smell and old woman voice—I am a young woman mummified in old woman—and I can hear it now, in my head, that old woman voice which sounds creaky, maybe a little rubber, an old rubber ball bouncing softly on a wooden floor. This is what becomes of your voice, body and being when you sleep for a long time (only yesterday I was a young girl, my voice a bright whip made out of licorice) … now I am ready for that rocking chair, the one over there, the one that’s been waiting for me, for us, let’s rock, the old woman chirps hotly to the stoic rocking chair … I sit down, settle my bones, settle my body, mostly settle my breasts which are now like beanbags covered in bruised purple vines (I sneaked a peek), and yesterday, just before I went to sleep, I had barely-developed-bumps for breasts, go figure. I rock slowly and look out the window and I am glad to see that there’s a world outside, simply that there is world out there is enough for me … I don’t need to prove anything, do anything, go anywhere, I am content, but only until I remember the babies, there were babies, my two babies, my two sisters, I was their caretaker, what happened to the babies, did they grow up during my long sleep, were they taken away, could they still be here, and the thought that they might be in one of the other rooms motivates me to rise from my rocker and start searching. Am I moving faster or slower than I think I am, this inability to gauge speed is something new—I go from room to room, seeing if there are either the babies or signs of their having been babies … nothing, not a trace … and what is even stranger, I do not recognize the apartment. Because I woke up here I assumed this is where I belong, that it is my apartment, our apartment, the one where me and the babies grew up, or didn’t grow up, waiting for a mother who was never returned to us. I do not recognize anything. It’s not that it’s different, what I’m saying is I have no memory of what it looked like, what it’s supposed to look like: everything is there—kitchen sink, dresser, closets, beds, sofa—all the things that make up an apartment, but is it my apartment, our apartment, I have no idea. This old woman looking back at me is not me yet somehow I am her (I am now inspecting the caved-in face with tanned tissue paper skin for covering), I was very young only yesterday, except yesterday’s yesterday was different from previous yesterday’s, it lasted so much longer, a deep sleep that spit me out old, confused, in search of lost babies’, and I know that I am not dreaming, but rather that I dreamed, and because I dreamed … ah, yes, that’s the key, that’s the phrase that started all this … because I dreamed … in that phrase my life became something else, a story falling from someone else’s lips, a fairy tale told to kill time—to kill time telling tales is to grow old—I am the one telling these tales to keep myself from myself, to murder something unkillable in me, to keep the babies entertained (what babies? where babies?). I woke up after a long sleep, an old woman telling herself a story about a young woman who wakes up after a long sleep an old woman dreaming in a house I don’t recognize, a house that has become my body and my absence.