Tag Archives: books

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Treasured (Underland #5)

In her mind she organised the day, hid little treats around the house, his favourite things and she baked. Tiny cakes and tiny biscuits as though they lived in a magical world. She iced everything with silver letters, anagrams of their favourite words and she watched him as he ate. One letter after another, sugared syntax on his tongue and he was happy. 

She loved to bake, she liked to feed him and later she set up the annual treasure hunt. Clues were presented in unusual places and the more he searched the younger he became. 

And the younger he became, the more they merged. Together, hand in hand they moved back in time until he caught her eye by the school gate and she looked down. And up. She looked back up at him and smiled. They walked towards the bottom end of town, to the park by the swimming pool and round the back, under the bridge, in the shadows he pulled her into him and kissed her. It was the most obvious thing and somehow as their lips collided it shuddered through the years as though she was an older woman looking back. 

They walked on, arms linked, talking nonsense, laughing. And at the turning for her road he said he’d meet her in morning, he might be a little late.

‘Wait here for me?’ he said. And she nodded, ‘I’ll be waiting,’ kissed his cheek and turned to go then stopped.

‘Oh, I made lemon drizzle today in food-tech, got loads, d’you want some?’ and she pulled the tupperware out from her bag, flicked the lid off and gave the cake to him, soft and moist, sugared in tiny stars. 

She pushed it into his mouth with pen stained fingertips, it melted on his tongue and he swallowed. 

‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘Yeah, pretty good,’ he smiled, and it was and she was and they were. 

Then. 

And now.

And always.

x

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Thirty

Her mother’s best table cloth, the awkward smile over chicken salad or was it ham?

Churchyard trees smelt of Radox, pine crumbled in her hand. 

Closed restaurant, tattered menu through the window reflecting them.

The lager soaked pub carpet, did she mention modern art, and lost her train of thought?

The Mason’s Arms, the slight hill by the Job Centre.

In Brueton Park the aviary was empty, a sense of space, of absence in the caged birdshit and lost feathers.

And from the bench the mowed grass, sap full, fell away from them like rolling years then stopped at the sudden gate. 

Red t-shirt in the evening, pushing chicken round a ceramic bowl. Trying to be elegant. White cold stone, little Bistro walls, The Fat Cat in Solihull, it’s probably a nail bar now or tattoo parlour.

Later. The quiet house. The Fleur de Lys of her parent’s sofa. Running her finger over its edge.

The kettle boiled, she turned to him, she felt the kitchen cupboards up her back before she made the tea. 

The chime of her parent’s mantelpiece clock, the weave on his fair isle jumper.

These things.

She dropped by to watch them as though it wasn’t decades ago. 

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Blackbird

First the pitiful candle,

the book not quite open.

Leaves they fell silent.

I made a pie.

Little whisps of hair-like steam

freed themselves

up through the ceramic beak of my blackbird.

With all the clean cells in-between us.

The steam spiralled up,

muted,

like the words we didn’t say.

I shuffled where my feet cleaned the floor,

the pitiful stone

where I danced for someone else,

who resonated,

who paid more attention.

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The Derivative with Respect to Time

And I drop like a stone from our window. It’s a blue slate slab of sedimentary rock from the sands at Bedruthan Beach, of course. And somewhere my old trainers still have grains in them from when I ran forwards.

And as my stone falls from the window I feel it bang against my thigh, pocket deep in my navy parka when I plucked it from the shore. And it was March, but a different March, not this brand new March right now.


And as my stone drops from the window I see it wrapped in something cream. Something ivory, like silk maybe. But it’s only paper and it’s bound around with twine.

And on the paper are faded words, written in black with an old biro. The biro was no doubt, a freebie from a recruitment agency, of course. And in those days it wrote well, its barrel was full of colour and it scrawled the words I’ll read. They’ll be written in that sideways print, that illegible loose flowing string of shapes where the f’s and g’s and y’s swoop to catch the the tops of the letters underneath. You know the ones.


And as the stone falls from the window the twine will come undone, the paper will untangle and float down to the ground. And there I’ll land with it next to me as I bump down with a thud.
I’ll pick it up to read a list of book titles, left justified, precise.
The House of Spirits and Cat’s Cradle
The Weeping Woman Hotel (of course) and No Time for Goodbye.


The sun is out this morning but it’s a push, it wants to go back in, as do I. I sit in it for a while beneath my open window, our bedroom window, from where I fell, to land in the dew of morning amongst the daisy heads. They’re not up yet but they will open soon and smile into the light. I may even join them.


And maybe there’ll be coffee and jazz will drift into my ears and bacon fat will sizzle on my finger tips, will claw me back into the day.

Yes, maybe these will be the points of reference on the compass as I lie in the grass. I must get up soon but for now, I’m crumbled here next to the stone that dropped me, next to the pen and paper from before.


And in the photons tiny creatures sparkle, they dance around your words, as if to say, here, read this, do this, be like this.
There are ideas and there are books and there is reading to be done.


I dropped like a stone this morning but it is our stone from the beach, so I’ll climb back up and carry on.

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Hunting

When days opened in the way they used to do, when she had written notes and hidden them, when clues were tucked in cupboards, and car boots, when she’d laboured over words and folded, when mornings opened full of silly ways, there would be smiles.

When days were full of treasure hunts, of simple gifts and cakes were iced and more books bought, always books, always.

Always.

When days opened in the way they used to do and she was right there and not here. When they opened to words inscribed, to squiggles from a small boy’s hand and days were sweeter than the things she baked.

When days opened in the way they used to do, when they were there, when they were young.