Sheena Patel - 3 - a stage

A poet stands on stage, her diamond nose stud glinting in the light. She speaks in a low, musical voice, Dutch words for mother, for father flare from her sentences, serialising familial pain. The room is hot, while she is watching she removes her coat, removes her jumper, drapes them over her arm, tries to listen. Once the poet finishes her reading, she closes her book, bows her head and picks her way across the cables on the floor. The MC runs on in her place, says her name, says thank you in English and then switches to Dutch, asks the room to split in two, one side are to shout scream and the other, louder. He says the command words in English. He raises his arm like a conductor on the stage, the audience pull against him for a split second then do as they’re told, one side shouts scream, the other side shouts, louder. Scream. Louder. The words have a shape, throw a shadow. They are the two sides of her brain, pressing against her temples.

The man on stage introduces a band, as five boys take their instruments. While he is talking, a woman climbs on stage and says, hoi, in each microphone to do a sound test as if the MC isn’t there, as if he isn’t presenting a show. She doesn’t ask for his permission to take the stage. The MC looks momentarily off balance at being momentarily usurped, spins on each foot, speaks down to the floor.

She checks her phone and her mum, the only person who texts her back straight away, asks if her phone is working now. She thinks she will ignore the text for a while, keep her mother waiting, despising her for being so ready to help her, so ready to pick up the phone when she calls even when the help is so basic. She clicks on the message so her mother will know she has read it and ignored it. Her mouth is prickly and dry, the pizza she ate outside, alone, hurried in the pelting rain was salty and so hot it ripped the skin on the roof of her mouth as she ate it. She skipped lunch because she didn’t want to go outside, didn’t want to talk to anyone - she could have been in her room in London. She needn’t have travelled all this way. She suddenly feels exhausted though no one talks to her, no one thinks of her as someone important enough to pay her attention, who would know if she spent three days in her hotel room. She thinks of the fridges humming their welcome. As the band start to play, the door swings open, interrupting her thoughts with a burst of golden light and bubbling chat from the corridor. A tall, elegant woman sweeps into the room, exuding cool, looking almost like a musician. A man in front of her whispers to his companion, she’s won the most important award in her country. Her eyes slide back to her.

She can tell who has an award, whose event has been sold out, the world saying lustily, I want you I want you I want more of you all of you, more want following want. She can sense the register of the woman’s body so different to hers at once languid yet solid and laidback. The tall woman will never have to reach out her arm, a loaded plate is always offered to her. She scrunches her eyes in the dark as the woman takes her seat thinking, could she satisfy this hunger.