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The Necklace

It is on me.  Around my neck and on my bones.  If I breathe in deeply I can feel it tightening warm fingers around my throat.  It is there and I’m always aware of it.  I know that people look at it.  They want to touch it with their own warm hands but it won’t let them.  It belongs to me and no-one else.  Sitting in this glade of purple fox gloves and shy daisies I feel it radiating in the space around me.  Light pulsating against the beams of sun and if I watch the grass and moss and trees they seem to bend towards the metal against my neck. 

A huge bumblebee sways his large body from side to side with the help of undersized frantic wings.  He wants to fly to the orange globe burning in the sky but it’s out of reach.  A smaller but no less powerful gravity is forcing him into a section of the forest and he just flies and flies and pushes himself to find the warmth and energy coming from this glade.

She sits and stares at the sun and the flowers and feels safe with her hands buried in clumps of grass at her feet.  A bumblebee flies into the glade and heads straight for her.  Unblinking she watches it advance until it is too close to change it’s direction and it has hit the necklace around her delicate throat.

Dazed and stupefied.  Stars circle its head and it lies on the ground contemplating the sky and trying to remember how he ended up in this position.  The giant hand of a human scoops down, picks him up and launches him into the sky where his wings kick in and he is back to swaying out of the glade in total confusion as to what just occurred.

It is on me and it hums.  I swear if I listen hard enough I can hear the earth humming back.  That bee just almost broke its neck trying to get closer to the metal at my neck and I know exactly how it feels. 

I once tried to take it off.  Left it right here beside the old oak trees bordering this glade.  I managed to take three steps away from it and the sky fell in, thunder rumbled and birds cried out.  At least that’s what it felt like.  I crawled back to the metal and placed it round my neck and sat feeling strength fill my bones and the usual feeling of weight returned.  I’ve tried a few times to ‘lose it’.  But I always know where it is and it knows where I am so I have no choice but to return to it fast with a migraine or sickness and now I know it will always be around my neck.  And fastened to my skin.  And my blood and veins and arteries.  It is part of me and I must have it near me.       

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