She is ALIVE!

Rafa has a sponsorship deal with cookies, now. I love this man. He is so very, very strange and dishy. Here’s what he had to say about making it to the final in Doha:

“I am playing well every day. It’s very important to start the season like this. Being in a final is a very good thing in the first week of the year. To win a title is important, and when you end your career you’ll look back on how many you won. I will try to play my best tennis tomorrow. It will be very difficult.”

This is pretty much the entirety of his English vocab. He is so adorable. Don’t ever change, Rafa. If you ever start cracking out the big words and actually saying things of substance, I will be very upset.

ANYWAY, I have something spooky to share!! Back when I was 15 years old, I was perfectly normal (honest) and enjoyed writing poems about the usual teenagery stuff, such as graverobbing, rape, and a little bit of necrophilia on the side. One such poem, entitled Here Lies Mary Thomas (one of many included in REVOLVE, hurhurhur) goes a little something like this:

Crouched behind the marble stone,
the graverobber set his sights
upon the grave of a young woman,
illuminated by the moon’s silver light.

Fresh roses lay upon the dirt,
her engravings had been scrubbed clean;
“Here Lies May Thomas”, it read,
“Still with us in our dreams”.

The graverobber allowed himself to smile
as he pictured her festering corpse.
He touched the headstone with stained fingers
and promised after this there’d be no more.

He picked up his shovel and started to dig
at the ground above where she lay.
At last, a glimpse of the coffin
that had already begun to decay!

After a strenuous hour, the hard part was done;
he hauled the casket out of the grave,
gave the lid an inspection before fetching his axe
and smashed through the wood, all the way.

At last, he sets his eyes ‘pon the beauty within
(a fresh one, buried only two weeks!).
He stoked her dark hair, pulled her out of her box,
over his shoulder, and out the graveyard he sneaked.

At home, set upon the cold table.
The stench was terrible, the neighbours would complain!
But not until after the deed was complete,
not until he had played his sad game.

Looking at her pale face, he pictured her smile
and the way she had felt in his arms.
He looked at her hand, saw the wedding band was gone
and suddenly wished her great harm.

Unzipping his trousers, he stole her modesty,
and this time she couldn’t refuse!
Again and again, he blessed the silence,
as her lifeless body he ruthlessly used.

Ray Thomas never asked Mary to leave him,
and he certainly didn’t want the divorce.
He took his revenge from the woman who left him;
from the angels, he begged no remorse.

With the deed done, he started smiling again;
of all their nights together, this had been the best!
Placing a beg over his nose and climbing into his bed,
he closed his eyes for a well-deserved rest.

…yeah. Okay. Just for the record, I have no interest in sexing up a corpse. I guess I listened to a little too much C.O.F when I was younger, right?

Anyway, back to the tale at hand. So, the other day I’m at work, I answer the phone. The branch up the road is looking to reserve a book for a customer…I get the ISBN, look it up on the computer, and see that it’s a book about dying and coping with bereavement. Pleasantries exchanged, I find the book on the shelf, and ask for the customer’s name so I can place it to one side.

Him: “Mary Thomas.”

Me: “…Sorry, could you repeat that?”

Him: “Mary Thomas.”

My face, at this point, is a little something like this: D:

I reserve the book and am informed that Ms. Thomas is on her way to collect it. The irony is not lost on me at this point. That a certain Mary Thomas should be seeking a book about bereavement, and that I should happen to take the phonecall is too strange and unsettling to be true. It so happens that, ten minutes later, I speak with her as she arrives to look at the book.

She’s a lot older than she was in my head…but I suppose you do age, when you’re buried a while. I left her with the book and ran off. I tried explaining to a couple of my colleagues but I probably sounded insane. Do you believe in coincidence? I never have. So she probably wasn’t my poor, decrepit character, back from the dead and seeking revenge for what I had put her through, but still. Just another reminder of how weird and wonderful the world is.

I’d take it as some sort of sign, but for the life of me I can’t think what it could possibly mean. Don’t think about necrophilia so much, Sinéad. Yes, perhaps that’s it.