2

As the red mondeo moved closer to you reflected in the bonnet of the car you saw your face and a look of shock and surprise that you’d not seen since the day before you 18th birthday and the girl at work with the violent boyfriend invited you back to her house for a cup of tea because the pub was too loud to talk properly and you thought to yourself that as pubs go this was quite quiet, and it was only in the taxi ride back to her house when she asked you if she could he tongue in your mouth that your realised what might be about to happen with the girl at work with the violent boyfriend that scared you when he called in sick for her every other week. But looking at her as you got out of the cab and saw the orange of the streetlights reflecting on her impossibly high cheekbones that seemed even higher when she breathed in through a cigarette, so felt that this was right, and that you might be able to lose your virginity before you were eighteen like had originally planned, and that the red of the streetlight was like a the red of the sunset in the westerns that your granddad watched on Sundays when he came to babysit while the women of the family went to church, and you thought that this was almost romantic, so many different elements combining at last for something you had been waiting for, and that when she touched you she kept saying “is this ok?” and “do you mind?” and youi kept telling her no, you didn’t mind one little bit. And when she started to cry because she thought her boyfriend was coming home and you had to leave in taxi with just a very rushed kiss to take home with you and the memory of how it felt when it seemed like everything was going to happen and then it didn’t. You always remember every year when you called her on your birthday the day after and she was with her boyfriend and giggling and he was laughing at you, you always remember every year on your birthday how that felt, about how you called her ‘the one that got away’ to yourself and imagined meeting her on a bus or at a station or anywhere that let your mind wonder a little about how things might have been if the night had ended differently.

Sunlight breaks through thick grey clouds

Sunlight breaks through thick grey clouds
With a force to suggest a strength
Beyond men,
Beyond nature,
Beyond space and time.
So don’t try to tell me that god exists
And controls all this.
And decides that there won’t be peace
in the middle east.
And bullets will fly
And kids will die
And mothers will cry
And leaders will lie
And sigh-Why?
What would let all this happen?
An answer in itself.

looking both ways

You didn’t look both ways when crossing the road. You never did, it scared the hell out of your friends but you never did, you just walked out assuming the traffic would stop. It’s amazing that you got to this age, but you always put it down to blind faith in your own actions, that you always did the right thing. You got halfway across the road when you heard a dog bark, and turned to your left to see a blind man with his seeing-eye dog, and you thought: that’s why they call it a seeing eye dog. It can see everything. And you realised that all the while you assumed you knew what was happening, what was going on, what was going to happen next, what your next move was going to be, and knew that you were doing the right thing, leading the way, taking the right path, that you might have been wrong.
That when you were only six and three quarters, on holiday in Wales where the sun seemed to shine continually, and there was always a fair on, that you shouldn’t have hit your brother with the cricket bat on the side of his head when his back was turned, that maybe he didn’t deserve it. When the blood trickled down his face onto his neck and mingled with the red in his football shirt that maybe he hadn’t been so bad to you, that maybe when he’d kicked you the day before when you were hiding in the bush trying to catch rabbits to cook on a fire in the den, that wasn’t enough of a reason to hit him that hard, and it was hard. You remember only being six and three quarters and always losing arm wrestling competitions with your sister who was younger than you so you couldn’t have been that strong and when you lifted the cricket bat above your head it was heavy, and you struggled to do it, your mom had always said you were a sickly child, and told the story of how you were born early and had always been weak but your brother was such a big strong baby and that made you feel so inferior to him, so inferior to him in all you did that when you lifted the cricket bat above your head and swung you wanted to kill him, to hurt him so bad that he never came back, that he never hit you again, or practised wrestling moves on you with his friends or made sure you played in goal at every football game or got the window seat when you went to town on the bus.
And afterwards you felt so proud, seeing the blood on his hair and on the grass and on his hand and face where he’d rubbed his eyes to stop crying. When your mom came out because she’d heard the shouting and your dad woke up from where he’d been sleeping on the rug outside the caravan and you saw the blood on his hands where he’d been tying the tea towel to use as a bandage and you saw the blood on mom’s face where she’d been hugging your bleeding brother and she looked into his eyes and whispered to him that it was ok, and probably an accident and that his brother still loved him and you thought no, no I don’t still love him, I hate more than anything in the world, more than rats and spiders and dogs (and it was weird that he thought of dogs because he quite liked them really, except that one that growled at him when he tried to stroke it and chased his sister away and they had to hide up the tree to be safe).
You said sorry to him when your mom told you to but you didn’t mean it, you didn’t mean any of it you just remembered a time when there wasn’t this competition and fear and need for attention and that he deserved it. As you looked first at the guide dog, then at the red ford mondeo coming towards you while the driver talked on his phone you realised that you shouldn’t have hit your brother and when you sister was born you both felt a little lost, and jealous, and confused.