Woman in Repose | Audrey Niven
She lies with her bare feet perpendicular to the tree, touching the bark, pointing north. Her eyes are closed and she no longer remembers which side of the trunk the lichen is on, but she knows there’s something about how it grows – north side or south side – that can help you find your way home. The idea has left her now.
Her hands are spread as far as they will reach, feeling the moss. It’s spongy and tight-curled; a comfortable bed. Her fingers grope in the soil looking to take root, to become one. Her hair is already weaving itself into the rhizomes of unnamed flora, little insects dancing the tightrope of its copper strands. Ferns uncurl slowly, sheltering her, when the sun comes at last through the canopy.
The forest knows her. The tree knows her. Its bark knows her.
The skin on her hip is pale and firm like a mushroom, growing in its own way in the dark. Her breast is scattered with acorns, her head crowned with peat. High above, a pair of Ospreys take flight and circle. They circle again. Her mouth is parted, surprised. The birds sail home over the woodland roof.
She lies beneath the tree she loved, fifteen long paces from the burn, a mile off the track, a long way from anywhere. She is melting into the leaf litter and bluebells, flakes of skin carried off in the breeze, the pink of her sweater dulling with time, absorbing the crusted red-brown like a pattern, owning the wounds and her flesh as it festers. She is sinking.
In a garden, on a road, in a town, a man tends his lettuces and looks to the sky for rain. His hands are lined with grime and work. He cuts peonies for his wife and locks the shed. He cleans himself and puts the flowers in a vase that he knows she likes. He makes a cup of tea and rests a hip against the edge of the worktop, looking out towards the hills while he drinks it.
The forest knows. The tree knows. The grave knows.
Audrey Niven is a Scottish writer, editor and creative coach living in London. She’s won prizes, commendations and a Pushcart nomination for her flash fiction and is published in the Bath Flash Fiction Anthologies 2020 & 2021, NFFD, Lunate, Ellipsis Zine and Reflex Press amongst others. @NivenAudrey