{"id":2303,"date":"2012-04-24T15:44:03","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T15:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=2303"},"modified":"2012-04-24T15:44:03","modified_gmt":"2012-04-24T15:44:03","slug":"ruth-solomon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/ruth-solomon\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruth Solomon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clinic<\/strong><\/p>\n

I knock on the iron door. My knuckle bounces off the cold surface sending the sound back into the cutting air. I wrap my coat sleeve around my knuckle and I bang it again, thud, thud, thud, trapping the sound at the point of contact, muffling it into place like squeezing a mouse against a wall not to kill it just to keep it there. The thud becomes a boom echoing inside.<\/p>\n

Then a sound like someone falling downstairs. The metal door cranks open- a slit- then widens and I enter. I climb the stairs. There are vases of dead flowers on the table. People like shadows glowing in the half light to slowly reveal aspects of colour; the red sleeve of a jumper, a knitted blue and white hat, fingerless navy mittens, a yellow shoulder of a kafkhan. They are moving around a blue flame which is intermittently covered and revealed by cooking vessels. There are utensils, crockery, uncut vegetables such as turnips, leaks and potatoes in a large cardboard box. There are packets of unopened sushi all in a row and the lingering smell of bananas slowly melting beneath their pulverising skin.<\/p>\n

The tap in the corner is dripping into a puddle of water in a bowl. Cooking utensils cover the grey office carpet around this puddle that is bouncing off the dim light from the window.<\/p>\n

At the other end of the room a man is having his hair cut. He has grey hair that curls around his neck and a placid face and he is sitting upright on a hard backed chair with a bib over his chest tied at the back of his neck. The whirr of the electric shaver is busy at the back of his head where a small young woman is guiding it like a miniature lawn mower.<\/p>\n

I am ushered into the side room. There is ash on the carpet and rows of packets of meat on the window sill where a crack of air gets in because the heavy sill has been wedged open with a brick. My stomach turns. There is no smell because the meat- large wedges of red and brown the size of small loaves, is smell-less in the vacuum packed plastic that seals it from all contact. Nevertheless my stomach leaps and I think I am going to throw up.<\/p>\n

I back out and say to the first person I see,<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease can you remove the meat on the window sill in that room\u201d<\/p>\n

Someone comes in and the meat is taken out.<\/p>\n

I sweep the floor with a broom while a man puts up a cloth over the inner glass partition of this office cubicle. He stands on a chair and dislodges the white ceiling slates one at a time in order to tuck the cloth into the gap and then let the slate fall back into place. Soon the room is self-contained- a vacuumed space in this wider building.<\/p>\n

I look out the window and see office workers working in an adjacent building glancing up and down back at their fingers on the touch-pad.\u00a0 Another man, maybe an architect is standing over a map spread out on a low table. His finger is pointing to one place on the paper and his whole body is leaning too, over in that direction.<\/p>\n

I unroll the mat and put it in the middle of the room, then take out the halogen heater from my bag and plug it in. Its two elements glow orange.<\/p>\n

A woman comes in with a crooked neck. She has fallen down a flight of stairs whilst carrying a sofa up to the top of the building. She limps in and lies down.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ruth Solomon<\/strong> writes flash fiction every so often. She is also a visual artist. She has had several pieces published in Ink, Sweat and Tears.\u00a0 See her writing here: www.preambleruthsolomon.blogspot.org<\/a> and her art here: wwwmovements.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clinic I knock on the iron door. My knuckle bounces off the cold surface sending the sound back into the cutting air. I wrap my coat sleeve around my knuckle and I bang it again, thud, thud, thud, trapping the sound at the point of contact, muffling it into place like squeezing a mouse against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2303"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2306,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303\/revisions\/2306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}