Amelia Bethel
An Irrational Response to Chapter 3 of Book 2 of Henry Fielding’s novel Amelia (published 1751)
The chapter is titled: The narrative continued. More of the touchstone.
O, Amelia!
This is not a false alarm, I repeat, this is NOT a false alarm
O, Amelia!
They say you have your whole life ahead of you, but is it yours?
O, baby!
Listen to honey drip out of his mouth before you rinse it away with vinegar from another
O, sweetheart!
This is happening, this is your heart racing and your brain struggling to keep up, this is knowing that every person tells you one thing while every cell of your being tells you another, this is seeing light through a pinprick and breaking your nails trying to carve out a larger hole, this is so wrong that it’s right, or possibly so right that it’s wrong, this is terribly overwhelming, this is your future but you have to choose to go right/left/straight and you don’t know which way to turn, this is speaking out of only one side of your mouth, this is NOT A FALSE ALARM
O, Amelia!
Why do you protest what you want?
O, Amelia!
Who said you must abandon all hope?
O, daughter!
Why do you let her speak to you that way?
O, Amelia!
Your practiced gaiety will not save you this time; your practiced gaiety is a muscle that is overgrown, swelling against your clothes and making you feel somehow too small and too large all at once. The restriction sends blood rushing to your face at the most inopportune moments, revealing more of yourself than if you were naked, revealing the innards of you to anyone who would dare to glance up, so you keep your face cast down until the heat is unbearable and your eyes are bulging from the pressure, they will only settle back into your skull when you raise your head so that it sits upon your spine and meet the stare of someone who has chained themself to your heart
O, Amelia!
O, Amelia
O Amelia
o amelia
There are no false alarms
*thank you to Sibyl Kempson for the gift of irrational responses, which she learned from Mac Wellman
**thank you to Joni Mitchell and Henry Fielding for writing things with my name
***thank you to my parents for my name
amelia@nynf.org
