As I turned the final pages of Written on the Body, two lines from a Seamus Heaney poem floated into my mind—unbidden, almost dreamily.
…When I come down, and beyond, inside, your face
Haunts like a new moon glimpsed through tangled glass…
~from Glanmore Sonnets
I wondered at the association of words, the images words paint, and the emotions they evoke. The sonnet in question is far removed from the emotion contained in the book; still the two lines refused to go, they lingered in my mind demanding recognition of the connection my unconscious mind had made. I examined the lines, wrote them down to evaluate them more accurately.
Then, from some subterranean depths of my mind, a connection seemed to emerge. Both the book and the last two lines are talking of exploring the beloved—so closely as to be almost submerged in her, mapping her, knowing every bone and sinew, going beyond the naked flesh to the interior where the seat of emotion lies. Knowing her as she will not be known to anyone else.
Writes Winterson: Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. To remember you it's my own body I touch. Thus she was, here and here. The physical memory blunders through the doors the mind has tried to seal. A skeleton key to Bluebeard's chamber. The bloody key that unlocks pain. Wisdom says forget, the body howls.
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