Innocence
Sent to flap about the washing, we tried to stay good. But what's a kid to do? Bored by the slimy scent of bins, by the oppressive woodsmoke air of Avonbridge, which in its vale wears a cap of smog in all but summer, we spied-- her window. Next to my gran's, Mrs Craw's: the crone who dressed in black, like her namesake, over selfsame spindling legs. So, what to do? We peered in. Her scullery, empty; a yawning sink like my gran's, ragged lino, Belling cooker. And there, beneath her open window—soup-pot, primed with tatties, carrots, split peas, for putting on later. I ask you, what were we to do? Then the laughing thought of it made us mad: it was all we could do to stop ourselves from throwing in stones and dirt from her back path. Which we did. When her bad drunken son came home later, to find no soup for his tea, he hammered her. What could we do? We listened through the wall. His roars detonated in my dreams; I crammed an ear to the rubber sheet to drown them out; and her emptied face—seen as we idled in the back court by her door next morning—haunts me still. Now, when I take a fill of my own mother's soup, as much as it is good and warm and tasting of all the consolations of childhood, still a part of me expects one day to break my teeth on a stone: or find the dregs of muck we left her with. Published by Northwords Now.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMy novel The Last of us was published by The Borough Press in April 2016. Archives
October 2017
Categories
All
|