Throwback Thursday: Echo/Narcissus

Each week we are taking a look back at the authors, stories, and poems that captivated us in 2019. Today we offer you an excerpt of Joelle Kidd‘s modern retelling of an Ovid myth: ‘Echo/Narcissus’ from Issue 21, Winter 2019.

Echo/Narcissus

I remember I was chasing you down the long gravel driveway, a steep slant for short, chubby, knobby-knee legs. I remember the bits of gravel, chips of stone were spitting out from under the crunch of our sneakers and bouncing down towards the trees that lined the curving drive.

I was running, the way kids do, so hard my chest was billowing and folding in, my throat was raw with the cold air from my mouth-breathing and tasted metallic, like blood, behind my tongue. I was getting close to you. I was almost there.

When I saw the back of your yellow T-shirt billow out, it looked like the sun was lifting it into my hand, and I reached out and leaned forward, sure I could catch you but not thinking about what would happen after that. 

I didn’t reach you. Instead my feet hit each other and I could feel the world sliding sideways and away as a shower of gravel sprayed out from under my rubber soles. I toppled and rolled and felt the sting of tiny knives over my skin, little stones etching their way in.

You didn’t know what to do and so stood at the curve of the driveway with your hands at your sides, staring.

I tried to stand but my knees screamed. Tears washed my face, and my wailing sent you running up to the house, calling for help.

It was just ripped-up skin. A torn membrane that let the gravel in.

The doctor picked stones out of my knee with a tweezer. He put a Band-Aid over everything and told me don’t cry, it’s not that bad.

I know it was just a scraped-up knee, and it had nothing to do with you. But when I think back, that’s the moment that sticks in my head as the moment I became permeable.

Linda says I used to be what she calls “a chatterbox.” I don’t remember this. You always had a question, she says. 

I remember coming into the dining room once when Mom was yelling for me to clean up my school books. She used my science textbook as a trivet. It was buried under a plate of turkey. You should have come when I called, she said.

I don’t speak much now. Mostly because I live alone, I suppose. Voices from the TV and missives from the phone in my pocket provide the comfort of noise, fill the void so that I don’t have to.

When I am trying to fall asleep at night I hear voices too. They drift in from the walls and the window, tone intact but words indistinct. Shrill screech and deep rumbling. I hear my upstairs neighbours having sex. I close my eyes and curl tightly into the centre of the bed.

Walking home I hear the voices too. It’s late at night, and a woman shouts, “No!” repeatedly. Men’s voices drift up from the yards of every house I pass. They are tucked behind trees, past fences, faces shadowed. They throw stones at windows. They jabber loudly into phones. They roar, out of sight. Their voices follow me down the block from every side.

For the conclusion, pick up your copy of Issue 21, Winter 2019 here!

Joelle Kidd is a writer and poet who lives in Toronto, Ontario. Her work has appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, Stoneboat Literary Journal, and Living Hyphen. ‘Echo/Narcissus’ is her first piece for Pulp Literature.