A Poem by Kellyanne Fitzgerald
the repository of unlived things
“No one lives his life. / Disguised since childhood, / haphazardly assembled / from voices and fears and little pleasures, / we come of age as masks. / Our true face never speaks. / Somewhere there must be storehouses / where all these lives are laid away / like suits of armor / or old carriages / or clothes hanging limply on the walls. / Maybe all paths lead there, / to the repository of unlived things.”
Rilke
I go into a big house to find all the lives I left there
and the entrance way is wrought in stone. Cold granite
warms to my feet, and lights flicker on with the yawn
of a television getting used to being seen. In the hallway
where portraits of my ancestors ought to hang
I find strange Irishmen with mustaches, known for beating
their wives and children. Names that fall unromantically
and land tangled up in unfinished tapestries.
To have put down a pen never to pick it up - that’s the study.
Creaking bookshelves laden with journals - all the notebooks
I began and wrote only a page. I tear out those first pages
and put them all in one box: to meet myself again and again
“Dear Diary dear journal dearest of diaries, my name is Kellyanne
Fitzgerald. I am 12 years 8 years 15 years 24 years old. I have blonde
hair and blue eyes.” I list siblings and their hair colors,
and never mention the sunlight tickling long hours spent writing
sprawled on the carpet, or the pale ineffable color of my thoughts.
A letter addressed to myself at 28 falls from a shelf- only four
years to go before I have to face another ghostly, bright eyed
self, writing about all the children I must have by now
and the book I certainly have published. And what does my husband
look like? I leave the letter sealed, I am not yet the intended target.
It waits humming, storing up time like a grenade for my future self.
Laughter rings out from the kitchen further in, and I catch my breath
because this house holds my children. Foolish of me to expect
this dream land to show me only the real. When I creep in,
all is swept up and tidy- white food cluttering the cabinets like parasites
breads and mozzarella, milky tea and clotted cream and angel food cake.
Silence over my shoulder as I inspect the pantry, and all the dishes I have never learned
to make, cursive swoops on recipes becoming whole personalities
who I am personally letting down. “I know how to make molasses cookies,”
I say out loud, like I need to justify myself. Nobody answers.
From the portrait hall I hear women laughing - the meals
they made and the things taught to daughters as they grew from knee high
to hope chests: all gone by the time I was born- and a tightly woven veil
thrown between us. It is like looking for roots in the concrete,
or holding the last drops of water in cupped palms.
When knowledge is lost it does not scream to be remembered.
No grief but the loss of pink as the sun sets, and then the loss of purple
and then the loss of light.
I look at the silent woman behind the mustached man
who never wrote anything down (was not able to finish school)
her only legacy the dishes from her mother, the embroidery stitches
that tightened garments and stiffened collars and spines.
“She wore a lot of grey,” says someone in my ear. “There was a sister who went
to the mountains.” I piece and unpiece myself to these faces-
spin and unspin some Penelope dream of who they were.
The bedrooms of the house are bolted shut. I try the doors, nervous
cheeks warm with kinship, with the need to be in a lineage
to have come from somewhere and to be going somewhere.
Behind the door is the crackle of fire, and raised voices
unintelligible. No one writes down the way they like to fuck.
I descend to the cellar, stairs into heavy nothing - chill draft and musty walls,
and all the unwanted memories - half formed dreams with misshapen ears
miscarriages and split lips, seeping trauma mines, primed to blast
and the dull cinder blocks of being born in the wrong time to be a woman,
or a writer, or to love women.
I open closets to look at the lives I might have led, in all their faded,
accusatory glory. “London 2012!” printed on the navy blue swimsuit
of a girl who worked harder at swim practice, next to the long skirts of the girl
who went to the fundamentalist school instead and killed herself before graduation.
A glittering black dress and gloves from Paris, a backpack, dusty from constant travel.
Necklace from a girlfriend who never was. Useless, priceless, stupid little treasures.
Every scrape of a hanger stiff with the static dream-energy of childhood.
“I am happy,” I announce, like it matters to this mass of quiet blue-grey potential.
Nothing here is alive - no feelings to hurt or let down. Just my own self - the fractured
mirror at the front door, almost meeting my thousand eyes. “I am trying to do everything
I always dreamt of.” My words echo mockingly. dreamt of dreamt of dreamt of
Cowed, I flee the house. The portraits watch, dead eyes following me still.
Kellyanne Fitzgerald is a writer and artist based in Madison, Wisconsin. In her free time she enjoys language learning, fiber arts, and folk art illustration.