On reading Mrs Dalloway as the Boeing 737 holds above the storm by Myfanwy Williams

1. Though middle age descends faster, just like that. Somehow, the lines on your face command gravitas, those furrows of skin calcified into fault lines, raised cement

   creases by your once soft mouth and brow; even skin tires of softness, and yes, the middle age gravitas when the young girls, with full pigmented hair and the slimness

   of youth, not effort, sidle past you on the plane. Sorry, sorry. Our seats are beside you sorry and you want to correct them, explain that excuse me or thank you is preferable to sorry. That sorry is a year eater, a decade eater, a devourer of goodness. And

   somehow you are beyond those sorry years. Somehow the students offer you a seat on the bus and stop giggling in your presence. Somehow, you have begun to wear, not

   your heart, but your mind on your home knitted cardigan sleeves. Somewhere on a park bench in Oxfordshire or Dublin you leave a piece of your mind, stitched into

   verse, flattened into paper. And perhaps this is aging, an externality of all you once suppressed into sorry, now worn as vibrant, discordant, crimson and rose yarn, now spoken, now spoken.

2. Though you cannot speak the tonality of middle age and you cannot love according to blueprint or manual, can’t countenance the yawning speech of home renovations, the morning tea speak of IKEA kitchens and this is middle age, a calcifying into one’s convictions. A rageful refusal to settle, with the gravitas of learning and lines

   as isobars upon one’s face. If it does not live, I do not want to hear it, your body rages. You reject all blueprints as you have rejected marriage, as you have rejected IKEA kitchens and Bunnings sausages on a Sunday. Here, reading Mrs Dalloway, you urge

   the plane to plunge through lightening, through atmospheric raging. Across the aisle, more young women. A cocoa skinned girl, her delightful mop of dark curls falling forward, her hand extended to the back seat pocket. Her hand speaking. An ankh tattooed on the back of her palm, near her thumb, L-O-V-E tattooed on her knuckles. Each letter turned to the reader. An externality of desire. This is one, you think, whose years will not be devoured by sorry. No sorries from her, not here in this metal bird holding above the sudden storm.

3. Sorry, your city welcomes cyclones now. Yes, this far South of the equator and while you’re holding steady just within the stratosphere, Mrs Dalloway encounters

   Septimus, this tragic figure of literary history. And you are beyond pity for the shellshocked man, doesn’t he possess a milliner wife, beautiful, Italian. Because he is

   not alone, shellshocked as he may be. Here on the plane, the American tourists bring their iPhones to the window, to the blinding flash and delayed clamour of clanging

   cast iron pots in the sky. The pilot has decided to descend. And what if Septimus were

   a woman, shellshocked but moving still; perhaps this Boeing 737 pilot is a woman.

   Not too far behind, in seats 11a to 11c, an infant cries and his mother is used to such fear, comforts him as she comforts the man beside him. There is no room in this metal bird, no room in the script of her life to retreat to the interiority of her mind. She must

   keep descending and there are no sorries from her, just murmurings of here’s Bluey, hold your stuffed cattle dog now and she’ll be right, and to her husband, a reminder,

   did you take your Travacalm. No sorries from her and this is not an unkindness. This

   is just life sure enough, here, descending.

ABOUT:

Myfanwy Williams (she/her) is a Sydney based queer poet and writer of Filipino Welsh heritage. With a passion for intersectional justice, her writing navigates a lexicon of existential grieving, while recentering art as a vehicle for social change. Her poetry has been published in Plumwood Mountain Journal, About Place Journal, The Winged Moon Literary Journal, Wild Roof Journal, Panorama Journal of Travel, Place and Nature, Alocasia, AAWP Meniscus Literary Journal, Clarion Poetry, The Madrigal Poetry Journal, The Crank, Crow & Cross Keys Literary Journal (upcoming) and Querencia Press’ ‘We Were Seeds ‘Anthology and others. She is a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee. She holds degrees in literature, psychology, and sociology. Follow @writermyf on Instagram.

EDITOR'S SONG PAIRING: Dear Sherlock - Mrs. Dalloway