Eighteen young writers from Flanders and the Netherlands have brought nineteenth-century artefacts from the Rijksmuseum to life. They wrote their stories in response to the question: what do you see when you look at these objects through the lens of impending doom? Sarah de Koning draws our attention to the white paint on Portrait of Alida Christina Assink by Jan Adam Kruseman. ‘A woman is used to carrying / long-drawn-out deaths in her body’

Jan Adam Kruseman, Portrait of Alida Christina Assink, 1833 © Rijksmuseum Collection, Amsterdam

lead makes the mind give way, mrs hamilton

death set in while you were still alive
that’s the beauty of a billowing death
looming ahead the mist on a hazy morning
slow and white-fingered
melville described such a lead white
as more disturbing than even the bloodiness of red
but here it is fine lace white marble pale fur
here it is a page like a white-hot
bee sting in the canvas
alice hamilton noted
that here was a subject tainted with feminine sentimentality
so I look for the cold facts and write: in the factories
it was the women who were more susceptible to lead poisoning
more likely to be sterile
more likely to have miscarriages and stillbirths
hamilton said that if they bear living children
they are more likely to die
but a woman is used to carrying
long-drawn-out deaths in her body and ghosts in her mouth
there is no woman who does not carry a predecessor’s voice
on her tongue there is no voice that is not forked
what do you see? seagulls cumulus hardiness
and how does the malady proliferate?
generational contamination
remaining firmly embedded in the embryonic teeth
of a blue-veined foetus moving slowly
under the weight and the ongoing after-pains
calmly placing silence on a stone and beating
until tender being patient
showing long environmental persistence poison
is a woman’s weapon
carry it in the bosom there are no signs for this
no foreboding of the bleeding no symptoms
imagine seeing a faded landscape in which everything
is porous imagine roots sucking up milk
think of that milk creeping through corridors and think of the fabric
of a canvas try to make it a cold-hearted image
and if you can’t scream louder and think
bridal veil jasmine bud think mother of pearl think birch wood