Birthday: Amarantha

Deleted scenes from the cutting room floor: an extract from Sisterwives

Patricia Oliveira

On the night of my birthday, Libby and Finn cook dinner.  They decorate the apartment with hundreds of lights, tiny glass flowers that illuminate the corners and dark places.  There are candles on the table, too, and I try not to think of that last birthday, Tobias reaching up to light the ones in our kitchen, the steadiness of his hand and the concentration on his face.  The smell of ginger and spices lingering in the air.

Now the plates are scattered with the remains of the paella, grains of yellow rice and the skeletons of prawns.  There’s somewhere they must take me, they say, and we climb sets of steps and steps and enter into a place so loud that the music chimes with my heartbeat.  The vibration in my stomach is unsettling; I turn to Libby but she’s entranced by the whole thing, by the darkness and the thud of the beat and the proximity of strangers.  Finn is quiet, watchful.  He has his hand on my arm and for a moment I long for the smoothness of sheets.  The cool and quiet of it.

Time is suspended. For hours there is nothing but music and the movement of bodies crammed against each other.  Dancing is a kind of poetry, Libby tells, me; a beautiful creation of a set of shapes, an energy between two people.  There’ll never be the same dance like this with anyone again. But at last we emerge, we’re going home, and the sun comes up over Lot and I think I’ve never seen anything so graceful as those tall buildings picked out by the light of a dawn.

Previous post:

Next post: