THE MONSTER IN THE CORNER
There is a monster in the corner
of Lea’s dining room; she sits on her reclining brown couch, a blue scarf
draped around her shoulders, the light of her laptop screen on her face, whilst
outside the autumn day dies slowly. She sits there, legs crossed the laptop on
a tray, writing a few lines then returning to browse, snippets of news, dying
cities, warmed up old rockers, fallen TV stars, the sleek, insulting idiocy of
fashion sites. It doesn’t matter, as long as she keeps her mind busy she knows
she is safe, it won’t move, she is
writing a story, somebody else’s, autobiographies, no way. She’s never been
able to decide whether people who write them are incredibly brave or plain
selfish lying assholes. Anyway she likes distance, distance in literature is
good, that‘s where the work happens. She learned that as a teenager already,
her writing in French was better than in Spanish, her verse stronger in English,
the linguistic distance helps, she could look at herself look at herself, look
at herself think or feel or cry. These days she is thinking of learning Malay
or Chinese anything different, the more alien the better one more layer to keep
the beast in the corner, just out of view, that’s where it should stay since it
cannot, will not go away.
In the corner the beast licks
herself, it is blue and furry with claws and teeth as a proper monster should
be.
