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THE ANATOMY OF

MELANCHOLY

Abigail George

The Anatomy of Melancholy

by

Abigail George

Copyright © Abigail George, 2020

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, retained or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the

author.

Published by Praxis Magazine Online Website: www.praxismagonline.com

Address: No. 7 Joseph Street, Opebi, Ikeja, Lagos

Cover photograph: Kester Kanayo Onyemaechi Edited by: JK Anowe

http://www.praxismagonline.com/

Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy

Contents

Foreword ...................................................................................................... 1 Searching for the Missing ................................................................................ 2

The taste of summer wine ............................................................................... 3 Coming home Catholic .................................................................................... 5

The woman that was a starling ........................................................................ 6 The science of breath ..................................................................................... 7

On the writer sent to a mental asylum in Gatsby ................................................ 9 Stern curator of the ghost museum ................................................................ 11 Rain ........................................................................................................... 13

Wildflowers to tempt Jean Rhys into a good mood ............................................ 14 Not somebody’s wife .................................................................................... 15

The caregiver .............................................................................................. 18 Menstruating according to the moon ............................................................... 19 Coming back to earth blessed with wings ........................................................ 21

When exactly the #MeToo movement happened to me ...................................... 23 For you I would be insane and lovely at the same time ..................................... 24

Solar .......................................................................................................... 26 Walking through the city streets..................................................................... 28

Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... 30 About the Author ......................................................................................... 31

About the Cover Photograph .......................................................................... 32


~ 1 ~

Foreword The universe of Abigail George’s poetry is dipped and preserved in winter, so you can be forgiven for thinking that the mention of summer in the very first line of the

collection sets the context. Well, yes, in a way, if you consider that the poet persona only recognizes it as an anomaly, one that requires a cure: I glide and float away

thinking to myself/ of a cure to the warmth of the day. This is the world this chapbook invites you into.

The Anatomy of Melancholy inspires a perception of existence that revels in that loneliness within us all, even if we are always surrounded by a crowd of forces

shaping and interacting with our experience of it. It is this that makes the reader privy to the tangible and intangible pains that litter the consciousness of this collection. In this world, of which the poet declares, I don’t believe in hours

anymore, time is defined by an urgency to immediately historicize each moment that flies by; moments that move without break from the visceral to the temporal;

from odes to elegies; from heartbreak to falling in love. It’s an unpredictable story swinging between pain and death and loss and love and flesh and bone and ice and desire, all the while told through a consistent stream-of-consciousness, and

understandably so, because as we learn in “The woman that was a starling,” life through a bipolar lens is a mosaic.

A motif you will encounter in this chap is that of flesh and bone and how both elements of the human body composition seem to interact, sometimes in tandem,

with a unity of purpose—Flesh unto bone melting into thin air—and sometimes in opposition—In an instant I was/ flesh against bone, infirm and weak—a pattern

symbolic of the polarity that defines the collection. On one occasion the motif occurs in proximity with the word “prize,” in a way that leaves one with a tragic

sense of fate as we see in these lines from “Stern curator of the ghost museum”: The kitchen sink is/ my mother’s wasteland. It is her politics, her flesh,/ her prize. She rolls deep in her garden.

You may discover, like I did, that how The Anatomy of Melancholy excels is by

continuously giving. There is something new to discover every time you come back to it—a hallmark of art. It is drunk on its own journey; joyously drunk on its own language. To engage with it is to undertake the same journey into a world it

articulates as beautifully-painful, and indeed into the poet’s head, a place which is succinctly described in “Not somebody’s wife”: Inside the poet’s head lies a

multitude/ of unexplored supernatural links to the experimental.”

D. E. Benson is a literary critic, editor and poet.


~ 2 ~

Searching for the Missing

The falling leaves in the summer I think of the love songs on the radio

and think of you in a faraway city. In- side this mute space I have wings. I forget

the structural damage that comes with the despair love brings with it. I glide and float away thinking to myself

of a cure to the warmth of the day,

the vanishing of the birds, and the distance of the blue care of the sky. We angle justice our way. It’s an adjustment but

it is also an anthem for the landscape that has given birth to us. I think of the

shine of the day. The cold ocean washes my feet. I think of great lakes and rivers. Eating steak on a sunny day. Fire and myth. Automata.

The extraordinary day. I ponder the vacant,

the vague hour wondering when you will come back to me. Giving me back

the ecstasy of being in love with you, and it seems as if I’ve been kept waiting for reliable things. Caught in-between

crossing the water and wild geese calling.


~ 3 ~

The taste of summer wine Human frailties become sharper, at the

feet of heaven. Its blue lens is more remarkable in deep confidence. I’ve worked this out in my head and heart.

I don’t believe in hours anymore. Silence. The futility found in life. I’m

blissfully unaware of weariness, more forgiving. There are names that I don’t remember, but I will always remember

this. That my brother went for a haircut before my uncle’s funeral, but there was a

line ahead of him. I have a long memory when it comes to painful things. I remember every hurt. Every injustice.

Every wound. Every cut. It’s a cold winter that flashes falls across my neck, my

shoulder blades, and in my heart all that I can hear is doom, doom, doom. It was as if I saw my own life flashing

in front of my eyes. In an instant I was flesh against bone, infirm and weak.

Hardly able to walk, hear, speak, and yet my speech was still golden but all I had

was spirit. Joy comes in the morning. In my dreams I want woman. I want to fall in all her soft places. It’s only in my

dreams that I give into the world. Once, I saw the love of my life and he was good

and kind and beautiful. I think of the wings of the morning drinking rooibos tea. Flesh onto bone melting into the thin air.

Lover, you’re like dry grass to me now. Having a woman as lover comes easier

to me. She was kinder when she needed to be, or a dominant force when she wanted to be. She let me come and go as I pleased.

I gave and she gave. Love was a lonely, romantic game. She understood my

loneliness and my silence. The love I had for her when I was high or low. I’m just thinking to myself now how family didn’t


~ 4 ~

offer to help when my brother went to

rehab. How they didn’t call, avoided us all a swimming pool in winter, but I remember

that no river is ever to wide to cross. In the end we triumph when we believe in hope.


~ 5 ~

Coming home Catholic You are the beggar man with your rosary

around your neck. You’re degraded by this material world’s itch in a thousand ways in a day. A hundred times at night. You, fool-

animal soul married to chains. When the wind sighs

in this city so poor you walk up and down streets feeling the breeze on your face. Be thankful for this

hot coffee. Accept this bread as a sacred gift. Put this food in your mouth. Feverish, eat! Nameless,

weary, lonely on your journey to nowhere you live like a stray dog. I see you’ve lost your teeth

somewhere on your journey. Your smile so mysteriously small. You’re in your own dark prison.

There are no windows for this hummingbird-philosopher

there. Even close-up I can hear your soul’s cries. We must accept its hunger, its sea, its spinning, its

psyche and intellect and isolation and trembling. Melody is sharp here and instrumental, wretched.

As a child you were sad, and as a man you are sad. Sister says this house is a palace. Brother was calm

today, and I, I wait. I wait for the white fields of snow that come in winter. I lock the backdoor at night.

Next as if you begin to appear to me like a beguiled ancestor.

Check all the doors. I drink sister’s tea. Brother made a cross when he came out of rehab. He fashioned it out

of fallen branches. A rusty nail holds it together. And very soon all our lives became like that cross. Brother

became determined to live, and not give up. He was the eye of the tiger, and we all lived to become theologians.

We became like chameleons, and all of our winters soon turned into summers in his hands. His tone cold earth. Plasma.


~ 6 ~

The woman that was a starling

Put the lion in his magnificent cell and

worship him there. In my dream leaves turn into milk quietly. Daylight crushed my dreams. Birthed the telephone-poet

with her flaming debt-free-volcano-lips. I’m a clone of that woman turning into a

starling while my hands smell of garlic. I am bloom, fossil, flesh and bone and prize. Didn’t eat bread today so that was a

good thing. Full of sleep. Full of winter the poetry was enough. The basil leaves

were enough. His voice is like clay in my hands. I make animals out of the clay. So the gin remained on the table. I tell

myself to wait for the lines burning-bright

to come to me to go into my future. I’m filling a suitcase with dead flowers

do you believe you can heal yourself what materials and tools should I use

inside my heart there’s too much rivalry too much competition gathering harvest

gathering driftwood by a restless sea in the absence of the absence of the absence of your heart for my heart my memory

is full of butterflies full of moths full of mother tongue silken throat sinful throat

life through a bipolar lens is a mosaic you mother are living in my bones again this is my love story for her i never wanted

to have those children during that phase of autumn in rehearsal mother you were a

difficult woman to love a woman with her own issues and secrets you’re the fallen kingdom you’re mine you’re mine but not

mine not mine all at the same time it came too late her love came too late i am master-

chef life with father is my vanishing tribe i send her all my love in my rice and meat


~ 7 ~

The science of breath

I have made mistakes in my life. I’m still paying for that

dark interpretation. For them with half-malice and delight. How cold the stars. The heroic damsel in distress. Abyss

found in dementia’s shoebox. Abyss found in Dominica.

Stars are cold in winter. In summer they begin to warm up. Show their true selves. Goodbye my eyes, my swimming limbs.

Let me count the grains of sand with my hands. Let me travel slow then hard and fast in this country. Let me moan about the

unfairness of it all. Look here at this surface of flame showing off daylight. Flames licking at desire. Look at this earth-dream

that once belonged to the river and then the ocean depth of it.

I think of the lungs of London. The slow and deliberate inhale and exhale. The busy Amazon-structure to it. I don’t think that

men are safe anymore. Their body language tastes of liver and

sinful things. Marechera liked sex once. His body (shimmered) like a leaf. His mind a sweet-sweet-sweet journey of shades.

I’m ecstatic about the seed he sowed. The uncommon hero- leader he was. His anointing. Now, let me count the grains

of sand on this land called Zimbabwe. Ask why the sea.

Kindness is a seed. Obedience is a seed. Power is a fish. A seed with hope and expectation. The theory of love speaks

to me in Technicolor waves. Shattering clarity. The spirits

of this place needs us just as much as we need them. Love speaks to me. That theory of falling in love a phantom-sonnet.

You were a careless mistake. The earth moves (inside of me) like a woman now. Chirping birds gravitating towards

the warm ochre earth. This amount of love. The eternal song in his river teeth. I know where they are right now.


~ 8 ~

In the context of heaven. They’re found in a paradise for the lonely, parched soil, the swarm a language in your eyes.

I’m addicted to poems and funerals, roses and cacti. I can love you. I can harm you. I can’t promise you I won’t.


~ 9 ~

On the writer sent to a mental asylum in Gatsby Lungs struggle. My lungs are struggling against this

Bastille, feeling small, the girl, the girl, the girl, this avalanche in my soul, this single woman’s anguish.

Comrade anguish does not let up. She mocks my proper

English. I want someone to take care of me. I couldn’t place you at first. Foe, foe, foe or Robinson Crusoe.

Coldness is this desolate thing like plastic chairs in a waiting room. Champagne supernova I want to explore

you. But broken people can’t fix broken people. That’s a figment of your imagination. Our souls are clothed

in sleep now. Moonlight on our skin. We’re living

different lives now. Different cities but there’s still an obedience there, a love that can fit into a museum

like the straight fate of the stars. I know the challenges

of finding love on a long walk in a nature reserve on a Wednesday afternoon. You were a kind man. The glare

of light here is something flesh, something bone just flowing out of the sea like driftwood. It is dividing

the haunting. Dividing the trees into forest and border

of forest. I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed of my sexuality, am I girl or boy, man or woman, tragedy or dramatic

artist (I’m trying to understand the speck of living with it).

My identity, the men and women that I’ve loved. Trust me. I’ve been left. And, so, love and friendship I write

about them in my poems. Dirt and grace and worship and praise. I’m a bird pecked to death by other birds. A bird


~ 10 ~

who lives under a cold sky casting a net for freedom. I want to be a miracle. I want to be a miracle. I’m afraid

I’m failing miserably at it. I think of the bones of glaciers and how I can hear them from far away deep inside of me.

Their frozen waterfall, their icy-mirth in my fist. I close my eyes

and dream of glaciers, delicate Jonah in the whale.


~ 11 ~

Stern curator of the ghost museum A kitchen is never dead. It is a living thing. A

Jerusalem. There were no waves. No distant shoreline. Only a greenness passing through the

climate. Swimmers’ heads cut off from the rest

of their bodies in the school swimming pool and I wonder if you still remember me. Skinny

legs. Serious face. Nose stuck in a book. Seriously curly hair. Books under my arm. Nabokov.

Gillian Slovo. I never promised you a rose garden. Now you pass through me as if you’re passing

through a reflection. Take your medication.

Make dad breakfast. And then there is this struggle of loving men who prefer the company of other

men. You’re things that make me happy and

things that make me sad. You’re like a ray of light, my darling, my sweetheart, my love. I

love you until all my insides are raw, until my spirit has withered away into nothingness and nausea.

Until the house that I reside in, my ice house,

turns winter into summer. The kitchen sink is my mother’s wasteland. It is her politics, her flesh,

her prize. She rolls deep in her garden. That’s

her bliss. Her being honest. After the rain she’s Jean Rhys. During the rain she edits me

away, censors me, declares me Mrs Rochester. Her hands smell like spaghetti. These same hands


~ 12 ~

that tear me apart. Ripping me apart until I’m raw. Raw!

And everything after that tastes metallic. I brush my teeth but it’s as if I’m doing

laundry or something. I can’t get the stain out.

And there’s a feast of winter in my hair while I think of Harlem and the African Renaissance.


~ 13 ~

Rain She’s graceful. A wall of flame. She’s beautiful.

She’s the lover that I will never have. The morning is vulnerable and open like the face of a beautiful man, who is staring at the woman he is deeply in

love with. I think of God when I think of her. Of course, He created her. The woman that I am in

love with. There can never be anything between us. She will go on to have fearless children. I will go on to write novels. She is married to a poet. (All men

are poets in their own way). We haven’t really talked. She admires me in her own way and I admire

her. In photographs, her magazine-hair is wavy. Luxurious. She looks like a film star. I want to mark

the return of the tragic hero and saint in her arms. I want to find the peace and harmony that I cannot

find anywhere else there (in her arms). I used to think about death but now when I see her, think of her, all I can think of is life. I want to come just

as I am to the breathy dream of her. The goal of her. She’s savage in her love (I know) and I already

know that I won’t be able to exist in that kind of world. All my life, love and the relationships

I’ve had with others have been supervised. First, by my parents. My mother’s instinct. My father’s silence. Then by a God that had to be feared. A God

that died for humankind’s sins. So, I flit and

flirt from men and women powerful and elegant in their own way. I know the world of prayer and meditation but I don’t pray to be with her.

I pray for her future happiness. I know the chaste world of hospital corridors. That universe of

doctors and nurses and patients and medicine. I’ve spent winters in hospitals (every year or so, when the depression returns). She’s changing

the world around her like a world seen through falling snow. She is body. She is soul. I am body too.

All I want to do is kiss her sweet open vulnerable face. Her moonlit shoulder blades. The nape of her milky neck. (Of course, I know nothing will come of this love).

She will raise fearless children (that’s the reality of the situation), and I will go on to write novels.


~ 14 ~

Wildflowers to tempt Jean Rhys into a good mood “Tea is better than sex,” said the Indian woman

on the television screen. It was a documentary, and she was travelling to Nepal to build wells. It was a documentary series on strong, independent

women who had their own money. Their own

rooms with views to the sea, or garden, or suburbia, or city-life traffic, and buildings, and motorcars.

And then I thought of Emily Dickinson, and what she would say about tea, and intimacy, and the

transaction of having her cake and eating it too, every rigour of stimulus, and impulse of trouble

at home, and I smiled, and then laughed thinking of

her loss, and my loss, her frustration, and mine. Always longing to belong to be the one rose in the courtyard

in bloom like the heavens, inheriting the wolf’s flock, inheriting the wolf’s religion, Sexton’s, and Kipling’s

poems too, and I thought of this waiting dance of

husband and wife that I knew nothing of. A universe filled with hungry children demanding to be fed, the

healing powers of whiskey, hungry souls longing for

a healing room. I go still. Think of Hepburn, and Monroe. James Dean. Jenny Zhang. Osip Mandelstam. Dorothea

Lasky, and how I continually find the source of the Nile whenever I am reading Russians, or, modern-day poets.


~ 15 ~

Not somebody’s wife Don’t let us go to the dogs. It's because you're in

love with the poem or life. You take the bread of hope, the time to reflect on it. With it being a modern fairy tale when it is read out loud or received by an audience

of other poets. Sober ones. Are poets ever 'the sober ones'? You're you. The poet undiscovered. The words are often

not there to describe the light of day, glare, depth, interviews. Inside the poet's head lies a multitude

of unexplored supernatural links to the experimental. There it comes in the distance. The barefoot lull of some

heart. Swim! Swim like a fish. Teeth let's go for it. Cave-diving for sharks underneath the sea. Let's swim for it. A river in your hair. Green-purple sea across your

shoulders. It's because the world is beautifully-painful

while myth and symbol at the same time are telling you to discover it. You tell yourself that this is vital. Energy is necessary for instinct, your success, personal development.

Poets drunk on the exquisite journey of an ingredient list or being joyously drunk on basic language. Drunk

on the seasons. Drunk on the birthdays of trees, of silence, of war. Drunk on the congregation of people on sandy

beaches or in church on Sunday mornings. Let me speak now of snow on winter branches. You are the mysterious.

The mysterious flame. Rings of people growing and growing, graduating to a circle around you the day of

your funeral. The universal order. You are an island. Nerves of steel and a glint in your eye. Part of the driven, committed, devoted, passionate few. This, this is not

goodbye. You burn right through me as if I am nothing.

I am looking for my father. He is the falling leaves in summer. Me, I found the two things I need to live. I have come home. Given up the mating rituals of the unbroken

city. I live in the Fort Lauderdale shadow of my sister. Here and there is an indentation of a man’s body in sleep.

The blueprint of his pilgrimage throughout this world, and beyond. His soul carries mine through a blue river

journal. The anatomy of melancholy here is bold and modern. People feel loneliness in different ways. I still


~ 16 ~


~ 17 ~

cling to the memory of him and somehow he still exists

for me on so many levels. I’m still in the phase of Eve. Desire like gold dust, pond life, coastal views. I’m left

here amongst the whales searching for a God to believe.


~ 18 ~

The caregiver Often people feel alone in different ways. Once

upon a time my father supplied all of my needs. In his eyes the smokiness of paprika. His limbs have a life of their own now. Now he brings me backache and A-Ha

on the wings and prayer of a dove. Leaves falling to the ground. Poet first and writer second. Futility

is complex. Gathering the declarations of an eternal-flame. I keep all the secrets of my heart. The feminine is subtle like chicken and soup. It is the masculine

that is the mysterious. My mother and sister. My mother waves us over to the table where she welcomes us.

Now I am considered an exile. Living between captivity and breath, gathering the subtle energies of pleasure

and pain. I delight in the seasons of music. Classical music and opera. The complexity of its mood. Sketches

of family drama and history. Museums and farms. Then I am yours, lover. To have and to hold onto. To cherish the familiar of you but you are not here and

a decade cuts through the separation. Cuts a divide. Your blood ripens and condemns me. Feeds, nurtures

me. Your flesh is a delicacy and so is your bone. I write from the valley. Mark a thin passage through darkness.

I long for your company but you are no longer here. I only know this heat. I only know this orange air. This

global warming. Hollow. Hollow is my voice. Is my life. My house. Overhead a feast of blue. A sea that

tastes like honey in the space of my dreams. You’re white and light and eternal. You belong to the hereafter. To the eternity. Your memory glows bright. Big with

love. Bright with an intensity. The sea is as important as the King Sun. Soon it will be dark and there will be

nothing but stars and moonlight out. And your face will bloom and bloom at will. I remember when I left home to see the world with your blessing father in my twenties.

Now in my late thirties I have undone everything learned there. The people I talk to now are ghost. Ghosts.


~ 19 ~

Menstruating according to the moon She’s mother up to a point. My heart bleeds

for the young. They move like wolves in a pack. The Indian- writer ladies never smile in photographs. They are so mournful-looking. I am always asked by photographers

to smile. I hate smiling for photographs. My blood is as dark as molasses. It flows like the sea monthly.

It comes from deep inside of me where an abyss grows and grows. My brother likes to build fires. Bonfires

that would light up the air in the dark. I wondered how other people lived if they did not have family. It

was love at first sight for me repeatedly. Teenage boys still have the ability to make me feel shy and awkward like they did in the corridors of high school. Standing

and watching for my humiliation. The boundary between

those years and now has outlines. I’m lonely. I have everything in the world but I still feel lonely, asking myself what am I living for. Now they’ll say I need a

man in my life, or a woman. The time has come for kingdom and empire, superstition and family to collide.

My legs are still thin. My voice is still thin and angry, hungry and mute. I have eyes and reading hands for

Gustave Flaubert, Beverly Rycroft, J.D. Salinger, Jane Austen and Jean Rhys. The kind of greedy love

they have for me is received with open arms. I fall for both man and woman. My distant mother with

her deep soulful eyes knows the bloom of health. I must begin to write the novel deep inside of me for sanity’s sake before the world as I know it comes to

an end. In our house we don’t talk about slavery,

even less about the minor earth of inequality. The tea is cold now. I’m a mad girl. Stay away. Stay faraway. My world is as cold as winter trees and as

harsh as Mars. I inhale and exhale that word Mars. I’m too old now to have children. To have a marriage,

and children. I have an atlas tattooed on my soul. I think of sound waves and tea plantations. I think

of India and Sri Lanka, the SA poet Athol Williams


~ 20 ~

reciting his poetry. His words, his words, his words.

His words seem so prophetic like they have their own religion. Mine seem so emaciated next to his. In high

school I fell in love with Radiohead and the Irish band Ash. I fell in love with words, girls and swimming.


~ 21 ~

Coming back to earth blessed with wings Oh, my cousins were social up to a point. Even

then I called them the Johannesburg people. The noises are louder here. The sea is somewhat involved along with her compatriots. Of nightfall, boats,

the docks, the pier, the Boardwalk. All these people. All these people fighting for survival. Living to

survive. It would be a dream of mine to become a motivational speaker. To talk to death in front of crowds as lonely as I was. From childhood I

was writing poetry. Travelling is the antidote to ignorance. I've never really been anywhere. Does

boarding school in rural Swaziland count. It must count for something for I fell in love there. First- everything. I have this. I have the modern and bold

anatomy of loneliness. How quickly the heart turns bitter and cold. The world is filled with people waiting.

Waiting to be loved. Waiting to be saved from the twisted forms, and the personality, and shapes, and illusive particles of ego, and vanity. The omelette

is a puffed-up cloud on my plate. I think of the yesterday- sea leaving a cool trail of white shoreline ghost in

the air. Winter people figures in the dark. Winter people moonstruck-dumb eating hot soup ladled

into bowls. There are four dark figures sitting on the steps of the front of the house in the moonlight. They are waiting for me to return from the mental

institution. There is sad laughter. Younger brother, middle sister, deaf mother, elderly, and infirm father.

You see all is not what it seems. The child is gone. I mean the inner child. The child that lived inside of me was useful to me in high school. I needed her

to be brave. Her function was to endure. Where those four individuals went at night I could not go. I was a

ghost. Twice-miracles removed. I built a monument outside the school library in the courtyard, for the carrion hidden-deep within my soul. Swimming returned

me to a normal reality. And I became a glorious-Hemingway. A Karin Boye. I was both man and woman. It is

overcast. I want to remember all my days here at Garden City Clinic for the rest of my life. My father's odysseys at Valkenburg and Elizabeth Donkin. Rest.

Rest. I need my rest. This is all too much. This is


~ 22 ~

war-writing. I don't want these memories. Can I exchange

them. I am writing with so much joy and passion now. How lucky they are, those four dark figures in the

moonlight. They’ll never know just how lucky they are.


~ 23 ~

When exactly the #MeToo movement happened to me (It happened 15-years ago. You didn’t speak about it

then, but you’re speaking about it now. Maybe that’s the difference.) You must forget, my father said. Forget about the past. The man in the workplace who grabbed

you, fondled you and stuck his tongue down your throat. You must forget for your own sanity. You must forget

the man whose name you can’t remember. The man who changed his son’s diaper in front of you. The man you went for coffee with. Had breakfast with. It was Natasha

who said he only wanted your body. Lebogang said she had the same experience. That he tried to kiss her too.

All these things you will remember for the rest of your life. This is why you left Johannesburg. Never pursued film-making. You were a girl then. Now you’re more

mature. A confident woman. Now you think to yourself, you survived. You survived. You survived it all to write

about it. You didn’t speak about it then but you’re speaking about it now. That’s the difference. But my father is telling

me to forget about it. (It happened 15-years ago. You didn’t speak about it then, but you’re speaking about it now. Maybe

that’s the difference.) I must forget, my father said. Forget about the past. The man who made an inappropriate comment

about ‘whipping me into submission’. The man in the workplace who grabbed me, fondled me and stuck his tongue down my throat. I must forget for my own sanity.

I must forget the man whose name I can’t remember. The man who changed his son’s diaper in front of me. The man

I went for coffee with. Had breakfast with. It was Natasha who said he only wanted my body. What he could do to it. Lebogang said she had the same experience. That he tried

to kiss her too. All these things I will remember for the rest of my life. It is why I left Johannesburg. Never pursued

film-making. I was a girl then. Now I’m more mature. A confident woman. Now I think to myself, I survived all of that shit. I survived. I survived it all to write about it.


~ 24 ~

For you I would be insane and lovely at the same time Here’s to looking at you at fifty. You’re

fifty still living in your parents’ house. You’re not happy. You’re living in the shade of your sister’s happiness. She

left you years ago, ventured out into the world on her own. You still think

you’ll get better in therapy. You still hate your own face, and sharp objects. Steak knives with their cool, clean, pure-

serrated edges. Masters of none-and- everything. Masters of Jericho, Ruth. Boaz.

The dreams you once had, you dream of still. They’re like paper flowers. And your voice is like the agreements

between them. Full of secrets, a fading sunlight of day paying attention to the

resonant branches and their tensing melody. You think back to all the hurt,

despondency, useless slipping-away- from-you-frustration, (honest), and it

moves inside of you like the first man who molested you. You go under the sea,

and become pure again (an innocent). Your hair is unkempt, and haywire all over your face. The road home all-pepper-

and-potholes. You’re still scared of the dark. Yes, yes, you’re still scared of

the dark. And you’re all feminine-and- masculine (girl with her hair cut like a boy). Still you long for the safe truth of women.

What did you do with the angels I gave you. I think of the coconut oil on my mother’s

hands as she combed and braided my hair when I was a little girl. There’s a little

girl in the advertisement I’m watching on television. It’s about hair. It’s about

hair. It’s about hair. African hair, whatever that means. Oil, sheen, relaxer cream, and I’m looking at the Portuguese man again who gave

me the eye in Johannesburg all those years ago. I think about his smile that lit up my face,


~ 25 ~

his light-blue sweater as he leaned over

the counter, and I think of the hair on his hands, his arms, the hair on his chest

sticking out like a triangle. I think of his European-lover-face, and how I went up in smoke that day. How sexy he made me

feel, how beautiful, and desired, this Captain Fantastic in the paradise that was Johannesburg then.


~ 26 ~

Solar I think of fruit, good olive oil, pasta, and

tuna casseroles when I think of her name. I think of overripe tomatoes perfect for sauce. Of just how much I loved you, and how you

never loved me back. I chose writing, and

you chose pilgrimage. You chose to travel to exotic places, never sending me a postcard.

My hands are in frozen chicken pieces in brine. My hands, fingers are stiff with cold to

the bone. I’m going to grill this chicken. The streets are breathing after the rain while

I inhale, and exhale, this intellectual black sheep. Autumn leaves outside my window. You’re

not here. I wish you were here. I wish you weren’t here. Yes, I was always difficult to

love, and the writing is still an experiment. I’m reading this book by Don Mattera. I

want to know my purpose, my identity, my

heritage, where I come from. I’m more than of mixed-race descent. You taught me that.

You taught me to pray. To pray for a publisher for my manuscript. You taught me many things.

To sow the seed for meaningful relationships, and how to multiply seed. You taught me to hope

for my name to be known in every home, to reach for the stars, the sun,

the divine. I don’t remember the colour of your eyes anymore, the weakness in you. Only that you loved all of me for a brief summer.

The sun always shines on television and the

Americans are always eating red spaghetti.


~ 27 ~

Discern, discern, discern please between your

goals and dreams. I can’t take my eyes off you.

Your works of flesh, of prize and lit award. The wise will hear. So will the foolish girls.


~ 28 ~

Walking through the city streets Young foolish girls become like

dust too with their volcanic lips. (Mama! You taught me this. This is how I know this). The writing

of your name brings you back to me. It’s like a boomerang. A litmus test.

I sing this hymn. I know what empty vessels are. I’ve loved you in spite of everything. I eat fat

and hot green chillies. I dream of future projects filled with stories

of light and laughter. Filled with Rhys. This desire would not be complete without a wise man and a gathering

woman. A woman who gathers

absence to her heart and futility. Piety, tenderness and purity. An age of innocence. The first rain.

There’s a background blazing in the distance. All my life I’ve been

looking for love in the wrong places. Here even speech has a stem, charisma,

and propellers. Blazing drones. Longing has its own translation. Grassroots silence and talking

about politics. Brutal lectures on the poetry on nothing. Here’s to nothing

but acceptance, harvest and Oprah. You’re an image of autumn.

Here, I can still hear your song, your refuge. It whispers to me

of a brighter future. To forget my childhood. Forget words like ‘childhood abuse’, ‘lack of mother

love’, and ‘trauma’. I visited hotels with men, you see. I am

not proud of it. Where were you? Who taught me nothing about


~ 29 ~

the shades of men and women? Mama,

You taught me nothing about men whose hands were as soft as the

roar of the sea. It is the young girl who suffers from anxiety. But no one ever speaks of this.


~ 30 ~

Acknowledgements

Once again, I dedicate this book to my brother, for all my muses, for all my loves, my parents, Gerda, and Ambrose Senior, and forever for the love of my life, my

sister. To the people that I love, to the people that I feel the most connected to in the world, that I relate to. To Virgil Bruiners.

To my editors, for painstaking mission after mission who redesign, reinvent, perfect my expression, inarticulateness, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and who edit my

work again and again. Thank you to all my editors (in no particular order). Thanos Kalamidas, Sam Hawkesmoor, Hugh Hodge, Gus Ferguson, Michael King, Michelle

Betty, Kyle Allan, Gary Cummiskey, JK Anowe, Tony Garcia, Tendai Rinos Mwanaka, Mikateko Mbambo, Dimitris Giannakopoulos, Ambrose George, Sola Osofisan, Naza Okoli, Sand Pilarski, and Chris Brunette. Thank you as well to LitNet Skryfwerk, the

curator of the South End Museum, Mr Cecil Colin Abrahams and Beverly Pieterse.

To the people, the working classes and communities that make up the Northern Areas. To Pastor Ignatius Koopman. To God, probably the singularly most important relationship in my life. To Him all the glory, all honour, and all the praise.


~ 31 ~

About the Author

Abigail George is a Pushcart Prize ("Wash Away My Sins") and Best of the Net

("Secrets") nominated South African blogger (Goodreads, link on Piker Press), essayist (Modern Diplomacy, Ovi Magazine: Finland's English Online Magazine, Ovi Symposium), playwright, anthologised poet, chapbook, grant, novella, and short

story writer (Africanwriter.com, Hackwriters.com), she’s a contributing editor at African Writer, editor at Mwanaka Media and Publishing, and the writer of eight

books. She studied film briefly at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg, which was followed by a stint as an intern at a television production company. She was educated in Port Elizabeth, and Swaziland. Her next novella is

one of both historical interest on the life of a reclusive American poet, and creative nonfiction entitled "Aspects of Emily Dickinson”. It will be followed by, “The elders,

matriarchs’, patriarchs’ of our community: Love Stories”. She is a Northern Areas poet, and has lived in the area nearly her entire life.

Her next novella will be published by Scarlet Leaf Review, “Don’t waste your pain, kill your enemies with kindness” due out in 2020/2021. There are more books in

the offing too, “Eating the breadcrumbs from the masters’ table”. It is based on the life of her black (of mixed-race descent who has his roots in Saint Helena) paternal grandfather, Staff Sergeant Joseph William George who served in the Cape Corps

(Regiment 39), and returned home a highly decorated war hero after the Second World War. Her latest book is “The Scholarship Girl: Life Writing”. She has two

chapbooks in 2019/2020, “Of Smoke and Bloom” (Mwanaka Media and Publishing), and “The Anatomy of Melancholy” (Praxis Magazine Online). She has been

published widely on online global platforms. She writes about women. Her writing has appeared online in e-zines across Africa such as Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.


~ 32 ~

About the Cover Photograph The photograph by Kester Kanayo Onyemaechi featuring the very beautiful model

Anyasi Pearl was taken out of curiosity. It sought to be an inspiration to explain the relationship between humans and light. The image was created late 2018 in Benin City, Nigeria.

Kester Kanayo Onyemaechi is a photographer from Africa, based in Nigeria

precisely. He's exploring the art of photography as a tool to influence the society, and also as a business.

Connect with him on Instagram and twitter (@khannahblack) Facebook: Kester Kanayo Onyemaechi

Mail: [email protected]

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THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY - praxismagonline.com€¦ · The Anatomy of Melancholy inspires a perception of existence that revels in that loneliness within us all, even if we are always