Sport 10: Autumn 1993
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So for years, unbeknown to my parents, I carried this seed of extravagance.
Or perhaps it was a cell, a rogue cell broken off and loose in the bloodstream.
Cruising for years along waterways, gliding through artery walls as though
they were Tunnels of Love. Such a cell would be capable of ambivalence.
Where to settle? Could something so powerful be yet so dilatory? Later my
parents would wonder if I hadn't been seduced by that week-long stay at the
farm where the traces of extravagance remained. There was the fridge
groaning with leftovers. And still a fairy light in a tree. Or, and this they
feared more, and it led to a closer scrutiny of my features up until the fatal
day when my profile did finally yield an irrefutable clue, was it something
in Aunt Cora herself, something a child responded to, an overpowering
liking, a desire for wildness, a madness to imitate. Whatever it was, and I still
think it was a trick of light, it was fatal.