Christy Lenzi

Jane Eyre Reads Coetzee by the Fire

Edward sleeps near the grate of dying embers.
His lids tremor as blind eyes see
dreams, behold memories.
I too seek unearthly things
beyond my grasp.

Lighting a candle, I reach for
the bleak volume on the table,
skim for my lost place in the shadowy pages.
Every line traces a memory—

I am the escaped magistrate
hiding in my aunt’s window seat.
Barrack doors slam open.
Master John Reed’s brassy voice
trumpets the Colonel’s return.
Invisible eyes probe behind dark glasses,
dark curtains.

When the magistrate steps into the light,
I find my place.
I am the captive barbarian—
a hooked fish, strung through the mouth.
Stunned eyes, wide, unblinking.

The beating begins.
Slender cane slices air, skin.
Pages flap, book soars,
hurtling toward its mark.

I am the magistrate, shouting at the Colonel.
“Wicked and cruel boy!”
I am a child in my Aunt Reed’s house.
“Murderer!
Slave-driver!
Roman emperor!”

Blood trickles down my cheek,
pooling at John Reed’s feet,
red as the room my uncle died in.
I am the little girl in the crowd,
sucking her thumb.

Shut the book; close my eyes.
I behold dreams.
Stout, green cane slips into my palm.
Fingers curl around the weapon,
clutch the book. Master John
kneels before me in the dust.

“He is not fit to associate with me!”
Dream-friends smile and nod.
Do it! they cry.
He’s the barbarian! He deserves it!

Helen Burns among the heavenly host
hears no prodding dream-friends.
No saints behold
my nervous smile.
No angels see
my rising arm.
No savior from myself appears.

Reader,
I am the girl who giggles while
making the enemy bleed.

An excerpt of Christy Lenzi’s second novel, The Forty Thieves (Yellow Jacket/Bonnier, October 2019), won the Katherine Paterson Prize for its category and the Eldin Prize. Her fiction has appeared in Hunger Mountain's VCFA's Journal of the Arts and elsewhere. She is a student in the English and Art programs at University of the Pacific.