An extract from a new work in progress.

…slap at thrip and thunderbug, midge & mosquito come whining from the dark at neck and wrist, ancient blood knowledge voiced by this time & in this place long before the winking out of every point of light & too the ones unseeable, inaudible, stars so far that they are yet to be even seen here so young is the planet in relation, how it will go with the one to whom you are wed Mary well ask the biting bloodbugs, ask the twirling phantoms hereabouts & implore the leaves & the shine on them & if you must grieve at this point before death then

it’s a bit shitty aye says Conko, it’s a wee bit shitty right enough but it’s real life sure, it’s all we have/it’s just all we have,

& there is no steel in loving what you know you’ll one day lose because there is no other choice,

there is no other choice

& Mary blinks clicking against a dampness on her eyelids click click two quick lidblinks & across the lit lawn comes a man with an object slung across his back & ah yer man Jimmy says Conko, brother of the Groom’s Da like/there he is with the fiddle on him/howyeh Jimmy

& Jimmy looks up & raises a hand howyeh son

that ye with the fiddle is it

we’ll have some singing soon by fuck

good man

& he crosses the lawn with the fiddle box on his back a man-sized mollusc bipedal & lubber, Conko asks Mary if she’s met the Jim yet & Mary asks if he’s the one with the glass eye & Conko says ah no that’d be his brother, Aido, the other uncle like, that one will have his accordion the oul consairtín like & the two of them can play their instruments sure Jeezo ye wanna hear them so & well I will says Mary but we’ll have the wedding mix first won’t we, the compilation for the Bride & Groom like & Conko nods & says maybe that’ll be them out from wherever they’re hiding then & then Myfanwy comes out of the big door in a hell of a pother asking if anyone’s seen Gwen she needs Gwen,

what for cariad

Dai’s having a kind of fit he is

he just needs sugar/get the man something sweet like &

Myfanwy whirls back inside & oh God she saw Dai’s eyes roll back & saw the tremors in his hands & the skin on the face of him all viscid and a-gleam with sweat & she espies the belly of Gwen in the horde & moves over to her in a jerky manner like the tiny spider in her childhood & the squirrel in her childhood & the & the

Dai needs you he’s having a fit he is Gwen come quick,

Gwen holds up a glass of cola & says she knows & that it’s fine he’ll be fine calm down cariad he just needs a sugar hit that’s all & they move in what could be called a scamper into the cooey alcove to the side of the bar where Dai-abetes is slumped on a table face on the tacky wood & Acne Gareth has a hand on his back,

quick now quickquick shaking he is &

Gwen oh Gwen, with her fingers full of care & ever so gentle, she raises Dai’s head by the chin & touches the cola to his turquoisey lips & softly tips, softly, tiny clink of glass on enamel &

have a drink of this now Bach take small quick sips now &

as Dai drinks Gwen breathes in deep in a search for the tang of peardrops or hay on his exhalations, within the general aura of him & inside her the infant tucks knees into its chest & curls its fists into its cheeks there deep in the darkness & the warmth of its paradise & there in the fallen galaxy of Dai-abetes the endocrine steadies & the pancreas lowers its defences & the Islet of Langerhans ceases to sink & starts to rise, re-rise, & DuwDuw the relief breathes Dai & he is able now to take the glass from Gwen’s hand, take his own control of it &

now eat something you daft bugger says Gwen & remembers a wooden pail of apples sequined with raindrops outside a small church in Bilbao & her phone buzzes with incoming text and it’s Lewis asking where she is & she replies that she’s with Dai because he’s diabetic type 1 and Lewis replies with a ‘1’ and Gwen repockets her phone &

Gareth smiles at her over Dai’s head and nods a thanks & his eyes all green in the bombscape of his face, the excess sebum that once ravaged it the clog of it & the moribund skin cells blocking the follicles as once it & they did & papula, pustule, nodule & cyst, but

them green eyes that Gwen sends a smile & a nod back into &

get him to eat something now Gar

aye

I’m serious get him to eat something

aye I will

Guinness & Penderyn are not recognised food groups &

ah these breakable bodies, such fragility here, the complexity of the systems upset by a grain of grit,

there’s some sarnies & stuff in the other room from the buffy still says Myf & Dai says aye but he’s not hungry & that doesn’t come into it says Gwen, take your medicine boi & I’ll make him a plate up says Myf keep him here Gareth & make sure he eats & she goes & Gwen points a nacreous fingertip into Dai’s face & says the one word EAT & leaves the room too with her freight of unborn, she feels it snuggle cosy inside her close up against one of her miraculous bags & soon, soon, soon she’ll be flat in a bright & loud & bloodied room & people in masks & smocks will transmute her into two & this she knows on a day when two have transmuted into one or so the rhetoric has it, & the world awaits it & does it await too the feel if new feet upon it the pressure of yet another & unseen it prepares its welcome, the festivities hereabouts & the sprite-lively night & what wonders it holds & the storm that gathers, amasses behind the nearby hills behind which are other hills & a sea behind them at the lip of which the sun is coiled to pounce once more in its glory & pandemonium, its making-mayhem awaits as it does for these such gathered here tonight, the knocking needle of the cosmic clock & yes what awaits is

in this mansion in this place & at this one time, all

these people who move & talk & sing & dance & ricochet & bounce tonight, here tonight in this place & at this time, equinox, Beltane as it is called, Awen, time of balance, Alban Eilir & in the days beyond & past this moment of celebration what awaits these people, towards what are they moving & do they move, as sure as their star seethes upwards through the skies & behind the ocean so these events await & are to come, occur:

cancer will crumble the bones of one,

another will die of a third massive stroke after existing through a twisted and half-lived year following the first two,

one will & at a great age drown off the shores off Kos,

one will be mangled in the wreckage of a bus on the Carmarthen to Cardiff motorway,

two will feel their hearts go nova, one during grocery shopping with a tomato popped in the hand & another whilst having sex, the partner trapped beneath, final breath on the buckling neck,

one will take herself to the top floor of a multi-storey car-park & give herself over to several gravities in some city of concrete & steel,

one will slip off the lip of a sea-cliff whilst photographing a peregrine falcon’s nest & the fledglings will follow his descent onto the rocks far below,

one will be atomised in a bomb-blast in a souk & become a swirling wet sunset of saffron & cinnamon & the droplets of himself,

one will be chainsawing a storm-felled tree & the blade will bounce back off a half-absorbed bolt long ago hammered in & the blade will flail & take off a hand & he will bleed out hollering at the edge of a County Kerry beet field,

three will gracefully & with long sighs slip back into other states in hospital beds with cherished touches upon them,

two will contract a new mutant strain of the virus which their ageing bodies will be ill-equipped to combat &

another will &

another will &

yet another will they all will & yet not one of them will fall to their knees this night & weep & supposing as one & as if at a prearranged signal they all did what then,

what then crying on their knees on the lamplit lawn & the planet at constant spin & the early-returned swallows that in the morning too soon come & pressed down by a heavy humidity to knee-height & there to whisk-dart through & between legs & put a brief & cooling HOO on patellas & calves exposed by gown & cilt, what then & what for the tears & what good could they do, bear, &

Gwen sees Dai gnawing on a chicken leg & gives him a thumbs-up & that gesture is returned with a thumb grease-gleaming like a tiny beacon & she feels it, Gwen does, oh she feels it, she feels the transmutation of matter when she for example eats a peanut-butter sarnie & a toenail appears inside her, a plum & a tooth, handful of cherries & there’s a rib in the place that never sees sun yet throbs with light & suddenly too hefty to stand she takes herself to a two-seater settee in the hallway, wide staircase of oak & carven acanthus pendant encircled with trails of sculpted fruit & flowers that have something in the shapes of them of the endless grace of octopus arms, rest for a moment Gwen & the unborn, your unborn, revitalise & inhale &

oh you will have such fun, Gwen, you & your yet-to-be-born, you will go to such places & do & witness things of astonishment even as the waters rise about & the winds scorch & speed-sear & you’ll find somewhere high to live, Gwen, just you & your children & the tides that rise you’ll build a cabin on a mountaintop & that house will have four rooms that touch the moon & there’ll be a cat & a dog & you’ll be far away from pathogen & virion, far above the gasping lungs & the bloodless lips, way above all stink of corruption & best stay inside, you yet-to-be-born, my cargo, so precious, stay inside, my flesh is your flesh as I breathe & as my blood beats so do you & so does yours so stay unfallen stay safe stay where you are so Eden-caught &

through the main door big & riveted & chocked open comes the night air bulging towards the sitting Gwen & then back out again as of a gigantic breath, towards & away, & out of that chunk of midnight seeps Brockie who in her black dress panthera pardus moves as if she’s never once in her life stumbled over the protruding edge of a paving slab on a busy street, she spies Gwen & asks after her welfare & Gwen points to the dome of her belly & offers a smile that tells of weariness & she whuffs air up over her face with her bottom lip &

just a bit of a sit down Elizabeth, she says, the night time breathing her in & out again, just a bit of a sit down, that’s all I need…

 

Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool, and has been living and working and playing in mid Wales for nearly three decades. He writes books.