At the very top of the tower you can see for miles. I stand there with my dress pressed up against the stone and my eyes looking at my hands. In the summer they are covered in freckles. The river stretches down in the valley like a scythe in the fields. Beyond it the estuary, and the sea.

How many times had it been forbidden to climb the tower and to look out, right out to sea? Why had it been forbidden when I had been too young to fall, to have the desire to fall, as I do now?

My brother, younger than me, had never sought permission but just ran up. I can still see his legs in his boots, running straight up, and no one calling them back. But mine were always followed when I crept like moss up the stairs with my fingers tracing along the walls. And, he my little brother who could not eat mustard in his ham sandwiches, who woke up to find that he had peed, who was small enough to be eaten by a buzzard!

There was never a year when I became allowed. I just walked up one day, and no one found me, and no one saw, and no one looked. My brother came less and less, because it had been a secret for him, a den of the past, nowhere for a man to play.  He grew out of childish things, whereas I was an adult when I was small, and now I am growing into a child. When we had been small, my brother had pointed out the fields and told me exactly what he could see, but still now I could not tell you if that really is the tree or the field belonging to the so-and-sos and I could not say, even though I walked there this morning, even though I could walk there now, I could not stand up here and say with my finger outstretched, that that is the place where. I would rather lean here on my hands and suggest that we just enjoyed it and did not divide it up between us like a kingdom on a map. I would say smiling as my hair whipped around my open smiling teeth, I would say can’t you see it without an ounce of criticism, as something whole and unnameable and beyond us and out to sea? Wouldn’t you rather it remained as it is and that we did not speak about it?

But then it had not worked. It had not worked that way when I had said it. Wouldn’t you rather it remained as it is. It did not drop into the valley, it got stuck in the space and could not unfurl itself.

You walked into the bathroom as if I had said something forbidden, and I returned to the kitchen and read my book on the low bench next to the window. And, even though at first I sat down with a feeling of bravado with the table wobbling a little and a little of my tea splashing and knowing that everything I did was insincere and merely the polite pose of a warrior, with the words of my book rocking like the surface of my tea, quite soon, much sooner than you can imagine, the sunlight stole in through the window, and I forgave you for everything. I sat by the window, and I completely forgave you, for not knowing what you didn’t know, and not being able to guess, and for every single thing you had ever done. I forgave you even though I knew you were in the bathroom, shaving and learning to hate me for my lack of grace and for my bloody determination to not see what you mean. If only you could have known that now I was not determined but as calm as the glass light on the surface of the estuary and completely empty too. And, when you came out of that room and talked to me about your lateness I could not give you anything because I was completely empty.

But, then, because you were angry, I became suddenly miserable and empty because I knew that my words had done exactly what they were not supposed to do.

They had named the places of my imagination, which you had guessed to be as conventional as yours. And despite your misjudgment, they had named them all the same, and you stood there following the direction of my outstretched fingers and mapped everything.

They had let you know for certain that I was in love with you, and that therefore I was a territory you no longer needed or desired. And more than that, it turned me into a madwoman and you into a responsible adult so that you took the decision that I had to leave then and there and that clearly I was behaving like an abomination and that you had to take control before I said another thing.

My instinct was to get down on my knees and scream and tell you it is not possible, but my other instinct, the wily one, the one which had sustained us for all the years, picked me up and walked me over to my shoes and put them on calmly. And, I tied up my shoes and thought that this is the worst tragedy of existence, and I thought I will tie up my laces in double knots even though it is so heroic an act of compulsory survival that I almost can’t bear to do it, and I noticed the cream colour of your carpet and my feet on top, and I did not know how I was going to walk out of the door and wait for the bus. I only remember going up to the upper deck and feeling that if the people only knew what had happened, if they only knew, if they only loved you like I do and for such a long time then something indefinable would be different. But, instead, the hour spread out inside me like an oil slick, and when I reached home I lay down, and my bones and my body could not breathe. I lay there like a dying cormorant on the beach and could not cry or move, and the tips of my fingers were stiff, and I knew, and I wanted to die because you did not love me, and you never would.  I looked at the tips of my fingers and they rose up like cliffs close in front of my eyes, and I realised that everything was over and you might die before I saw you again.

I press the tips of my fingers into the stone, and they show white around the nails. I do not know if you saw my fingers pressed against my cup this morning when you told me you were with someone and tried to behave as if you were a man, and when I laughed at you, but that is what they look like now. I found it so easy to laugh at you, like a sea-gull, superior and ridiculous.

I looked down at you and you looked up at me with your eyes squinting slightly and your arm up to shade yourself from the sun. I looked down at you, and I laughed, and I knew for certain that there was absolutely no relation at all between us.

So, now I press my whole hand against the rock, and now my arms are straight, and somehow I am up, standing on the very top. It is amazing, my balance. I stand inside the blue sky, and it is heaven, and I stretch my arms out so that they are the very breadth of the valley and the wind blows against the sleeves of my dress and my hair and my teeth. I stand here on the top of the tower with my arms outstretched and pointing nowhere and everything above beyond and below is empty, and I know with total certainty that nothing ever really happens. I stand here on the top of the tower, and I cannot tell you anything more.

—
By Buffy
Image of Paul Klee’s “Eros” painting