The Change part 6: In the Fall-Out of Chernobyl, Black is Inapposite


She is in her black as usual.

Black coat and bag
Black bra and knickers and slip
Black dress
All black, every day.

Saying – he is dead and I am sorry
The semiotics of the outfit.

She is in her black dress at the doctor’s waiting room
In the hospital
Surrounded by women like her.

Some crying silently, anxiously,
some dead eyed,
exhausted with an IV of nuclear-ness
drip, drip, dripping into their bodies.

With husbands
With women friends
With mothers, with daughters.

She is alone, and happily so
she needs a break from the well intentioned baggage of others.

She looks at herself
And she says
“This narrative has to change”.

This event marks a way stone,
a departure from the path she thought she was going on.
Her agency in this new reality asserts itself and says,

“Dump the black, Live. This is your time now.
He has had his slice of mourning, duty paid, honour given.
If you don’t seize this moment and change you will miss the point.
This is for you and you alone, This sweet juicy slice of life, of loveliness
Is yours
Are you going to waste it mourning?
In black?
This is not your part, not your role
It is time to swap, To change, To move on.
And now you have to write your own script.
Black is no longer ‘in’.”

Sitting there she leafs through Hello Magazines, more stories about Princess Kate
Numb
Speechless.

She forms an idea on which she will act.

The news in the consultation room is
Doled out like cold porridge
Sticking to her insides as she digests the news.

She sits impassive,
the doctor not sure she has heard and asks
“Did you hear me, do you understand?”

But she is frozen,
She must damp down this nuclear explosion with great effort and expertise.
A small smile on her face.

While inside –
Devastation,
Deva – station.
Hurricanes, volcanoes, peril of death
Anxiety, fear, terror.

Outside – flat mill pond.

“Yes I understand” she says
“I will have an operation,
I will have radio therapy,
I will have medication for five to ten years.”

She repeats it back,
the doctor is satisfied that She has heard.

This will take some ironing out later.
This amount of inner turmoil will unravel
At some point
And she wants to get it out of the way
Now.

But it is not as convenient as that
It is much more protracted
And messy
And will leave a trail of destruction like the aftermath of Chernobyl.
That will take decades tidy up.

And so the black is out
The black is binned
Black is rejected and put away
It is time to change

To turn back black
Turn it inside out
It is her time
Black is over

Mourning is done.

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