The hand

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I never went outside. Much as a child. I grew up inside. Afraid of the outside. A manor house. Big old stone thing. Creaking walls. Lots of indoor space. Perfectly manicured lawns. I think in half sentences.  

The hand.

I remember everything about it. It is the mark of. My childhood, that patch of lawn. Perfectly Cut. A square. Part of a bigger rectangle. Intersected  by a path. It sat right next to the driveway.

The hand.

I can’t remember how old I was. When it first happened. I was simply standing on the lawn. That lawn. A hand. Green and covered in grass, came up out of ground and grabbed my ankle. I was terrified. Frozen. Rooted to the spot. I looked down. I could see it had hold of my ankle. Then it let go. I examined that grass. Minutely. There was nothing there.

No hand.

A few months later the same thing. Again. It happened intermittently, as I grew up. The hand out of the lawn. I tried never to go out. Grasping my ankle. I stayed very still. It let go. I had an older cousin, Maisie. Her daughter strayed on to that patch of grass. They found her playing on it. But they never found Maisie. There was simply no trace of her. The police investigated. There was nothing.

No hand.

I could see the patch of grass from my window. Sometimes in the semi darkness it seemed to heave itself upward. Roll and then settle again. I never went on the grass. Not after Maisie. Then an even odder thing happened. The grass seemed to grow. In a neat line. Across the driveway. The gardener kept killing it off. It kept growing back.

It was the hand, I know it was the hand.

I knew even then what had happened to Maisie. One day I simply packed my suitcase. And left. I remember stepping over that errant grass on the driveway. Knowing I had won. I took one of my mothers best jewels. I watched from afar. A pariah. A thief. As the house opened to the public. It shut again after a few years. A young woman went missing. No trace was found.

It was the hand, I know it was the hand.

I married. Had a daughter. Then she had a daughter. It is all too painful, even as I think of it now. They were in an accident. A terrible accident. My husband. My daughter. My grand daughter. Not me.  In the days afterwards, that became months and years, I contacted my brother. He invited me home. To the house.

I wondered about the hand.

Back to that house. I would go. To live out my final days. He seemed to think there was some justice in what had happened. I still had that suitcase that I took with me when I first went. Tatty old thing. I took it down. Opened it. Empty. Except for a tuft of green grass in the bottom. I sat on the bed.

I wondered about the hand.

There it was, I went home. When I got there. The patch of grass had been fenced. First by wrought iron then clear plastic panelling put up. The gardeners struggled to keep it under control. I watched the grass grow, big and tall. I knew it was coming. Coming for me. It would snake out across the driveway no matter what I did. It was patient.

The hand.

Late one afternoon. After tea and cake, I put on my best dress. I went down to that piece of lawn. I opened the gate. It creaked. Clanked. As if announcing my arrival. I stepped inside. All this time, that bleak dark thing-whatever it was- had waited. I did not wait. I walked onto the lawn.

The hand.

Portraits from a town 11

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

He winds down the window. Music is pumping out of the car. His head is nodding in time. He thinks its in time. It might not be in time. He looks in the rear view mirror. The trailer is still attached.

He puts his elbow on the door frame. He looks at the grey streaks in his hair. What’s that phrase-‘silver fox’. His paunch pushes against the seat belt.

There’s a notification from social media, a new video. He is following a 23 year old who does yoga on instagram. He messaged her about his ‘downward dog’. She answered. He thinks they have a connection. He is wearing beige trousers.

He has taken off his wedding ring especially for this trip to take the cardboard to the recycling centre. He turns up the music.

He thinks of his wife wandering around the house in flip flops and bold prints hiding her stature under swathes of fabric. He has definitely connected with that yoga girl, even though he isn’t quite sure what a downward dog is.

The music is something he found on his son’s phone, it’s probably the latest. He gets the thundering bass but the lyrics are a mystery. Every word is said so fast. Still soon he thinks, he and yoga girl might converse more and he wants to seem modern. He sees a woman walking along the street, middle aged, no make-up, nameless trainers. She looks at him. She will not know this music. He is sure of that.

He arrives at the recycling centre. Parks up. Checks his look in the mirror. He gets out of the 4WD, looks around. If he isn’t wrong, he is the most attractive man at the recycling centre at the moment, maybe for the day, even the week. He hitches up his trousers. He wished he was wearing a shirt, he’d undo a button, show some chest.

The recycling bins are quite high. You have to throw stuff to get it in. He is ready. Pumped. It is not a competition. If it was a competition, he would win.

He has borrowed his son’s trainers. He hopes the lad will never find out as he begins slinging cardboard into the cardboard recycling. There is something macho about slinging cardboard he thinks. Its primal. Like throwing a spear or something.

He has taken up a lot of space parking. That’s ok, every man here must feel inferior in his presence. They can probably tell he works in banking. Well actually in a building near a lot of banking headquarters, its almost the same thing. He works in the banking district.

He wished he had a bigger trailer for the car. His trailer is a tiny little box thing. Of course he could have fitted all the recycling in the back of the car but who does that when they own a trailer? He liked the way it felt to shove all that cardboard into a confined space. How it felt to hitch that trailer so hard to the back of the car.

And then there is the added difficulty of driving with a trailer. He is very good at driving with a trailer. It might even be his super power. He imagined yoga girl watching admiringly as he hitched that trailer. Then he noticed, Mrs whats-her-name across the road peeking through the curtains. She is so old, so very old. He wonders if he will ever get old. He’s not sure if that bit of cardboard went in. He should have brought his glasses

He looks around to see who is watching him. No one is watching him. They are focussed on getting rid of their recycling. Probably partly intimidated by his masculine stature.

Where’s the car key? Oh no, has he lobbed the car key into the recycling? He will have to call his wife to come and bring the key. In the fiat 500? Where’s his phone? In the car? He will have to ask someone else to call his wife. He doesn’t know the number. He is not good with numbers.

And then, a flood of relief as the young man in the parking space next door says, ‘Excuse me granddad, but I think you dropped your keys.’

He hates the way young people have no respect for older people. He goes home.

There was nobody here

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Don’t cry in silence, I thought I’d try poetry again, not sure if the rhythm is quite right.

I learned to cry silently,

To never let it show.

To lie right down beside him,

And never let him know.

He shattered into fragments,

I told myself it was fine.

I picked up the pieces,

 for a life that was not mine.

I stood beside his grave,

I did not know what to say.

I put my emotions in my pocket,

For another rainy day.

And then came the reckoning,

Along with the fear.

I screamed, I cried, I shouted.

There was nobody here.

Portraits from a town 10

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

He sits in the corner of the pub. His corner. He remembers how pubs used to smell. They don’t smell that way anymore.

He is here alone. There are other people here. Other men. They are alone as well. They are alone together. All of them alone and somehow together. In the pub. Scattered over disparate stools, staring at televisions mounted on dark walls, drinking beer from nearly clean glasses.

There is a younger man and a woman in the corner. They lean in, in close conversation. Her shirt reveals cleavage, a hint of bra and then flesh. He stares. It is his birthright. The woman notices. The man notices. He looks away. What is happening to the world when you are not allowed to stare. What is a woman doing in a pub anyway? He does not bring his wife to the pub.

She is at home, the wife. He thinks. He thinks she is probably at home. But mostly she is not at home. She might be out playing bingo with friends. She might be at that odd gastro pub up the road. She might be at her exercise class. He orders another drink. She might be with another man. Whatever she is doing, she is not at the pub. She is not alone.

He chats to the barman who is too busy to talk. He engages in mild conversation with all the others who are alone at the pub. He watches the TV at the pub. He can’t hear the words on the telly. It never used to be like this. He was never alone at the pub. There were friends, laughter, tales of brave drunken men and women waiting to be eaten. When did they all go home? Why did he stay behind? Now he looks down a woman’s top and the world hates him for it. He is indifferent to himself, whoever himself is. He stares at the beer mat. He could count his life in beer mats, he has known so many.  In his head he does not exist, it is all that makes the loneliness bearable. That and the beer.

He looks at his hands, there is no wedding ring. It is hard to remember why he doesn’t wear one. It makes him feel unmoored. Less like he exists at all. Less like he is tied to any kind of life. He has a freedom he does not want anymore. She wears a wedding ring and somehow she is the one that is free. It is hard to understand. He looks at the beer mat.

He likes beer mats. And ash trays and crisps and shirts that spill open as young women lean forward. He stares at wrinkled hands, wrinkles that somehow crept through the door and interlaced themselves all over his hands, what kind of alone is this? Whose hands are those and where did they come from? They are most comfortable wrapped around a glass. They once held the hand of someone who does not recognise him. He drinks some more. Looks at his phone, thinks his children might text. They never do. They learned long ago not to disturb him at the pub.

She is laughing, at the bingo. Wishing the children would stop sending her texts when she is out with friends. But then, remembering them makes her smile, she doesn’t mind so much. She looks at the wedding band. There is the nice man from number 85 sitting over there, perhaps she will slip it off later. It always feels wrong to be faithless with the wedding band on.

Tomorrow night is Zumba with Lexie, then drinks with the girls on Friday. This is what she waited for, its what made all that child bearing and drudgery worth it. Days in the sun, with laughter. They are all going to Portugal, Maisie’s son has a house out there. Girls only.

She does not think of him. He is at the pub. He likes the pub. When the children were young he was always at the pub. He still is. Probably. He barely exists in her mind. Except as a mouth to feed and some trousers to wash. And as a smell in her bed that she is used to but does not like. He slides into bed beside her. She often pretends to sleep. She used to shower as a courtesy buy she doesn’t anymore.

There is silence as she makes the breakfast the next morning. Every morning. She makes his lunch to take to work. Perhaps he knows, perhaps he doesn’t. How can he know anything through the beer haze.  She is still smiling, the man from 85 is quite ‘energetic’ as it turns out. She fiddles with the wedding ring. He married the pub, she has a life. He goes to work, comes home, trudges back to the pub.

Late one night, he wanders home, sits outside in the gutter. He cannot bring himself to go in. When he was young, he was out at the pub, he missed the kids growing up, but what a life he had. Now she has a life and he is alone. He did not see that coming. He did not predict the end even though it sat next to him on a stool every night. He remembers those old men, their hacking coughs, their sagging skin, joining in conversations they weren’t part of. Desperately free. Unmoored. He did not think he would be one of them.

He gets up, goes inside, the smell of another man mixes with the beer on his breath in bed. It’s like their paths crossed just the once in the middle somewhere and now they are moving further apart, and radiating out from the place they once met, are beer mats, like stepping stones. He’d like to turn around and go back, but the beer has slid down the side of the glass and the beer mats are wet. Someone has thrown them all away, there is no way back for him. He sleeps, snores and thinks of tomorrow night at the pub.

In the Gap of the Gods

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

And now for something completely different, I don’t normally do poetry, here’s why:

There are gaps.

He sees them as silence to be filled.

I see them as space to explore.

We run at them, at speed together,

To see who gets there first.

He fills the space with overpriced words,

I guard it by wrapping myself in its silence.

It is an endless dance, like the moon and the tide.

We push and pull at the shadows of the world.

When you found yourself surrounded by friends and laughter,

That was him.

When you were lonely because the phone never rang,

That was me.

When the world crushed you with its noise,

That was him.

When you sought and found sanctuary in solitude,

That was me.

There is a balance, a see and a saw,

Endless, the two of us, evermore.

Portrait from a town

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

On weekends he witnesses car accidents. A picture in words. What does he look like in person? Does he live in your town?

On weekends he witnesses car accidents. On Saturdays he drives to the supermarket car park. He sits and waits. Sees it. Then tells the at fault driver he is innocent. Hands over his details. He has been a witness in 47 accidents in 3 years. Each time he has told untruths. Each time he has said the wrong person is at fault. He wonders if any insurance company will ever figure it out. He does his shopping on Tuesdays. There are never any accidents on Tuesdays.

He particularly likes Christmas, there are more accidents at Christmas.

Every evening, he comes home from work. He gets out of the car. He could walk across the grass to the front door. He could. But he doesn’t. Instead he walks down the short drive and out the gate and around on the pavement and in the front gate, up the front path and goes inside the front door. He likes the feel of concrete under his feet. Concrete is firm and resolute. It makes him feel in control.

He is not in control of the grass.

He works. He has done the same thing for ten years. He has done it so often he does not know what it is. He isn’t certain anyone knows what it is. He likes tuna sandwiches. He watches western movies. He wants to ride out across the open plains. He cannot ride a horse. Instead he secretly longs for cowboy boots with tassels and patterns stamped into the leather. But this is England. They would stand out. He does not want to stand out.

He has pictures of cowboy boots on his phone.

He is secretly in love. With a woman on the train who he has never even made eye contact with. She reads books instead of looking at her phone. That is odd. She wears clothes that don’t quite match. They could be odd together if he could just speak to her. He cannot speak to her. Maybe she is mute anyway. He waits for the day her wedding ring is missing. One day the wedding ring is missing. He almost takes the opportunity to sit in the same carriage as her. He could sit behind her looking at her calf. He thinks about her calf. A week later the ring is back.

He does not sit in the same carriage as her.

He watches pornography. He does not watch pornography. He has it on as he reads the paper. It is not the same thing. He was married once. He has a vague memory of it. There are pictures. Of him smiling at the wedding Maybe in the spare room there are still pictures. It was a long time ago. The dog has been missing. For years. Perhaps it is in the spare room too. This weekend he will wash the car. Last weekend he washed the car. He has cleaned the outside of the car every weekend since he bought it.

He has never cleaned the inside of the car.

Inside the house is the furniture, it has been there a long time. The TV, the couch, the bed. There is not much else. He should go out drinking with mates more often. Take up a hobby. Leave the house more. Perhaps he will get another dog. He looks at the beer stashed in the corner. He should take in a boarder. Except in all those movies, boarders are serial killers. If he wants to survive he should not take in a boarder.

He wants to survive, there is no safe boarder.

He takes a beer from the stash in the corner. He switches on the TV. He thinks of how he needs to make a change. He will make a change.

Tomorrow he will walk across the grass.

Stories in two sentences

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

1: The car hit the wall and I heard them say, ‘She’s dead.’ Now I can only smell wood and dirt, but that can’t be right, because the wall was made of bricks.

2: I want to reclaim my heritage, be the girl who tamed the wyvern. As its teeth sank into my neck, I could briefly smell its breath, feel its tongue on mine as I realised the story was a myth.

3: I came home late one night and someone had swapped all my furniture. I woke up the next morning and my husband wasn’t the man I thought he was, I stayed anyway.

It’s about the blanket

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I am distracted by the idea of ghouls in the bath, of serpentine creatures seeping up through the plug hole and devouring my children. I need help. I can’t sleep. It’s ridiculous I know. I’ts about the blanket. I know how silly that sounds. It’s a throw, not a blanket, what is the difference-where you put it? IDK.  It’s all the same.

He has been ill so I have slept on the couch, whole nights under its soft, warm comfort. But sometimes I wake in the night and it’s like there is someone lying next to me. An arm thrown over me, a leg along side mine. I don’t move. Horrified, there is someone there. But when I finally do move, there is only me and the blanket and the couch.  And then I can’t sleep.

I look at it during the day, examine it. It is just a blanket, there is nothing special.

I nestle under it each evening to watch the television. But some nights it just feels more ‘aware’.  One night I spilled something on it and I swear it jumped sideways. Or did I throw it?  It’s the way it slips off me or doesn’t slip off me when it should. I can’t explain it.

When I lie in bed at night, I picture it stretching itself out on my couch. The thing is, it never seems to be in quite the position I left it. I get up in the night and try to catch it out. I folded it neatly one night, and got up at 3am to see if it had moved. It hadn’t. Well at least not in a big way. It had sorted of slipped as if it had just folded itself back into position. I know it can’t be the case. Its not real.

I am getting paranoid, I think the blanket is real, I think there are sea serpents down the plug hole, the kitchen is going to be covered in mould every morning when I wake up. I need more sleep.

And tonight I am tired and I need to go to bed. I brush my teeth, put the children to bed. I am so tired.

I take one last look out through the door that leads into the lounge, into the darkness. And there on the couch is the blanket. I daren’t switch the light on. It is there in the darkness sitting on my couch. It is sitting there as if it is a person. It is somehow draped over the cushion and it looks like it has a head. Like a shrouded body. I need more sleep.

I go to bed. I can’t get it off my mind. I can’t sleep. I get up again and peek through the door. It is still sitting there.

I go back to bed.

No I can’t sleep. Just knowing it is sitting there. I know it’s not real. It’s a blanket, it’s a throw, it is some kind of blanket throw combination which doesn’t matter.

I am bewildered, tired. I can’t sleep just knowing it is sitting there, human like, with form and shape.

 I get up, go out into the lounge. I don’t switch on the light. Why don’t I switch on the light? I make my way through the murky darkness. I reach out my hand to smooth it down in the darkness and as I do…

It turns to face me.

Him and her and me

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

It’s addictive. I sit watching it with my pig.

The evidence is circumstantial. There is no body.

I remember him, the smell of him. Now he looks gaunt.

There were three of us, that day, a long time ago. I really should find the photograph. Her and him and me.

He seemed so nice. She was full of life. I wasn’t. Now they say her life is gone. Gone that day. Unproven though. Like bread gone wrong.

The sex was great. Mind blowing. Afterwards he didn’t call. Either of us. I thought he would call. I drifted, just wandered away.

I should find that photograph. I could help.

Every day I watch. Drawn in. The pig is going to starve at this rate. He is the man I remember. Somewhere in the outsized suit.

Lazy days in the sun.

Bikinis and beach balls-like a coke ad. Afterwards he never called.

I watch the trial. He recounts it. All of it. The whole day. The days before. There is a photograph. Its not quite how I remember it. Someone is missing.

I must find my photograph. I remember the three of us. Him and her and me. He didn’t call.

Then before you know it, it’s over. Guilty. He killed her. Me. The evidence is circumstantial. I might never watch TV again.

A life sentence. I should call. I could help. Days, weeks, months, he is in prison.  

Then I find the photograph. It is not how I remembered.

The picture is just him. Him and me. I wandered away, never went back. Circumstantial. No body. I remember now. What the doctor said. She was just a voice in my head.

I should call. I could call. I didn’t call. I fed the pig.

Portraits from a town

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Part 1

And so this was London. These weird overplayed notes in the darkness of the concert hall. If there was a dress code, it was black and grey and greyish black, like the sky and buildings, as if the whole place was constantly at a funeral.

She was married to man who’s name she never took the time to remember. And when she could remember it, she didn’t know him anyway. They never spoke. She never needed his name. It was mutual.

It hadn’t always been like that. There had a been a spark, a fire, then life. Life was like a fire extinguisher. The thought made her laugh. They had spent their life walking into the gushing nozzle of a fire extinguisher. It wasn’t a sophisticated thought. Not like these weird queasy notes, not like London. 

She sat in the concert hall wishing she’d brought a book. She could sit outside in her mismatched clothes in the empty bar, sucking in the smell of alcohol, her nose in a novel.

This was her life. So different to the other life. She came from somewhere no one had ever heard of and no one else had ever been. It meant nothing, the rest of London came from somewhere else as well, inexplicable how they all dressed the same.

London was another planet. You could be an alien in London and no one would know. It was not like that in the town where she lived. The music baffled her. Was that singing, is there a difference between noise made through your mouth and singing? She thought so.

Part 2

Another working day done, off the train, head down, up the hill, along the high street. It was dark as she dawdled home. Dithering in her bag on the pavement. He rushed past, ear phones in. He didn’t say sorry. He didn’t look. She simply didn’t exist. She was non-plussed, unimpressed. That level of speed, focus, direction was unnecessary in town. This was not London.

She kept going. Down that street, along that one, to her street. The van was blocking the pavement-again. They were standing there talking-again. She smiled. The van door was open. What would happen if she just climbed into the cab and just went through it, opened the door on the other side and leapt out. She didn’t. Wasn’t brave enough. She just went around and home. To Him, the one who’s name escaped her, again.

Part 3

He saw the woman dithering on the pavement, paid no attention, brushed past her, meant to say sorry but didn’t. He would have said it too loudly. These damn earplugs. He was listening to music his wife recommended. There had been a concert the night before. He had refused to attend. This was why. This rotten damn music. This singing, was it singing? It was just noise through your mouth and a plinky plonky keyboard. He didn’t enjoy it. He was trying but he didn’t like it.

This marriage, this life, he hadn’t made it work. How had he gotten here, the same place where had he come from. He was from here but never intended to end up here. He had wanted something different. This music was certainly different.

This noise, this music, it reminded him of a fire extinguisher, one had accidentally gone off at work. This odd music, that was exactly the sound it had made. How could she like it? He made an effort to think of her name when he thought of her. Otherwise he was worried he would forget it.

They had parked blocking the pavement-again. Damn it, he was just going to go through. The door was flung open, why not? Through their cab, open the door on the other side and leap out. They were standing there talking-again. He was going to go through, not around through. He got closer, closer still. Then at the last minute, he swerved, went around. Next time he told himself. Next time.

Two lives, they touched so briefly, almost. More similar than different, despite their beginnings. A moment, but not long enough to make their destinies collide. Maybe next time.

Some people would draw it but I choose words for my pictures. You know the place, you’ve passed through on your way to somewhere else. You didn’t stop and if you did it was just to buy some food  before you drove on. It was nondescript, home to no one you know. You can’t even remember its name. It wasn’t big, it wasn’t small, it was just a town.