diary on the portrait of a woman
Colette Leisen
i had forgotten how beautiful it was.
12 dècembre
george sand said, i felt suffocated when i was married, and now my freedom frightens me more. i had come home and written him a letter. my fears, my anxieties, my hopes. there was a christmas when i wished him the bubonic plague. there was a time i would sit in the bath surrounded by candles and tea leaves, reading erotica while he was on the other side of the door.
i wished him a life of purple roses and oversized tubs in oversized rooms.
27 dècembre
i spend my first christmas alone. i miss those blue blue dusks and wide open skies; white days that melt deliciously into each other. snow is falling still. silent.
hush.
i peel off layers of clothing, murmuring. wondering aloud how i am feeling today.
3 mars
i spend the week taking photographs, whitewashing the walls and walking the seawall. we all decide to take a trip to the island. our entourage of eleven left in the pouring rain; we stood and sang our anthem crossing the waves, soaked through.
the days were full of wine and late nights catching up on each other’s lives with just the light from the stove. we draw straws for rooms and i sleep in the boathouse where i can lift my head in the morning and can gaze at the ocean. i take the fishing rod and make my way to the pier. the air is crisp and salty and my mind is quiet. there is no one waiting for me and this coastal life might just be the thing. but i’m never completely free, i realize, casting, badly into the sea.
the shadows stretch long gold light blur of umber and sienna your chalk blue eyes making a seafarer of me in my boat of solitude i rest my oars
26 mai
the bolsheviks are running amok.
today i want a companion to fix me supper, wash my back and curl into me while the skies explode. today i miss having a lover. i want to run, but i don’t know which way to go.
I walk east and pull the cord that is hanging three stories down outside the abandoned building. benjamin’s doorbell. he takes off my boots and washes my feet.
he has been collecting, and has created a massive chandelier from thousands of keys. watch this he says intently. a switch is flipped and it starts to gently, rhythmically shake. i smile.
it sounds like metal rain.
farthest kiss fragile will into morning sweet standstill breath defies empires end silence breaks i descend
14 septembre
what a day it was, spent digging vegetables out of the soil, rows of purple concorde grapes and raspberries. the dinner party is sublime. a peculiar and eccentric array of people. we are parting for the winter. laughter peals out of the windows and the wax has melted onto the tables. anne reads us the song of solomon in her slip. i get up to take a photograph as stanley plays the piano.
we pack up the last of our things and walk home backwards, gazing
at the orange pink blue black sky.
she drives a citroen and stops at the crest of a hill. a town of stone built on the shore where the monks gathered salt and bowed their heads to get through the impossibly small doors. she is looking for the castle on the twinkling sea where she will bathe alone
she had forgotten how beautiful it was.
Photograph by Colette Leisen.
Colette Leisen lives and works in the City of Vancouver.
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