Chinese Lantern

 It seemed appropriate.

You were going.

You had always loved them so we made one in the afternoon, from tissue paper and fine wire.

At seven, we carried it to the top of Melham Hill.

You said it was like saying a prayer. It would be good luck.

We set the burner alight - just a couple of candle stubs stuck to a jam jar lid. It took a few minutes to heat the pillow of air but then, at last, it slowly began to rise.

“Wish on it,” you said, “Wish on it, quick, before it gets too high.”

“What? Wish? Don’t be daft,” I said.

“Do it! Close your eyes and make a wish.”

You closed your eyes tight. I watched you, your face pale in the gathering dusk. Your eyes flickered beneath your eyelids. You lips were closed still, but I could see them moving, as if you were saying a prayer in your mind.

You were beautiful.

I didn’t need to think. I knew what I wished for and I knew it would not come true. Could not.

Up it went into the still, evening sky.

We watched it climb higher and higher, getting smaller and smaller. A tiny living thing in the darkness.

“How high do you think it’ll go,” I said.

You turned and looked at me, a slight frown on your face.

“All the way, of course,” you said, your voice tinged with mild indignation.

“Yeah, right,” I said, and you hit me on the chest.

“Don’t spoil it,” you said.

“I’m not spoiling it - it’s lovely.”

“Yes, you are,” you said. “It’s a dream, it’s a wish - it goes up and up and up until it comes true.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to spoil it for you. You were going. We didn’t know when you would be back.

“Come on,” I said when we couldn’t see it any more. “Let’s go home.”

You turned in to me and pulled my coat around you.

“I don’t want to go,” you said.

“No,” I said. I could not say anything else.

You pulled on my coat collar and our lips met. Then I kissed your eyes and face. There were tears on your cheek.

The taxi came at six in the morning.

It was misty waiting for the London train. The rails disappeared into the grey. We heard the quiet grinding growing steadily louder and then the train loomed out of the mist. Suddenly you were busy. You kissed me quickly and gathered all your bags together, pulled up the handle on your suitcase.

“I’ll get that,” I said.

We guessed where the door might be when the train stopped. We were nearly right.

There weren’t many other passengers but a few doors opened for people to get off.

I picked up the case and carried it onto the train, but my being on board made you edgy.

“Get off quick,” you said, “or you’ll be coming too.”

It was hard to say anything, so I just hugged you and went back to the door. You chased me back down the carriage and grabbed me again. Kissed me. But the guard was slamming the doors. I had to get off. I ran back along the platform to where you were sitting, but the windows were so dirty we could barely see each other. And there was someone sitting in the window seat.

I ran a little way beside you as the train slowly moved off, trying to keep up with you. But it was soon too fast for me. I stood and let the train slip away, watching the end door as it grew fainter in the mist, getting smaller and smaller.

I walked home.

It was still early and the dew was still wet on the grass. Down the lane the cow parsley was in full bloom. It leaned out into the road, glistening in the sun.

I had not even told you I loved you.

I felt sick.

I stopped at a gateway and looked into a field. The mist had lifted. Cows were grazing. One lifted its head and looked at me but soon lost interest. I watched its tongue wrap around the long grass and tug it up into its mouth. I remembered the tip of your tongue touching my teeth as you kissed me goodbye. The taste of your lip balm.

I came to the path we had taken to climb the hill the night before. I wanted to climb the stile and go up again, to find you there again, for it to be you and me, there, together again. For ever.

I could not. I hit the stile post.

You were gone.

I walked on past the honeysuckle in the hedge that you had stopped to smell. A spider had caught a wasp in its web. The wasp was buzzing still, but the spider had already wound it in silk and held it wrapped in its legs. It could not get away.

I held you in my coat last night. You escaped.

Then as I walked on, there it was, lying in the road - a tangle of wire and sodden shreds of tissue paper. I picked it up in my fingers, felt the coldness of it, the tattiness of it, felt how it was wrong.

“It goes up and up and up until it comes true,” you said.

It had not. It was not magical, it was not a wish - it was a dead thing, a piece of trash. I flung it into the grass beneath the hedge. Then I went and picked it up again. Held it again. I crushed it in my hands. Crushed the wire frame into a small ball in my hands.

And I put it in my pocket.

Until it comes true.

prompt: Ten Chinese Lanterns (I lost nine somewhere along the way)

Of paint and passion

 At the party of a friend one night, Geraldine was wooed and seduced by a painter.

She was drawn to his muscular physique, his dark brown beard and sensitive eyes. She imagined the delicate brushes in his hands, the soft caress of squirrel hair on canvas, the thick urge of paint teased slowly across the creamy sea, swirling voluptuously under his control. 

In the darkness of the cab, her heart beat fast as he unbuttoned her blouse. His hands sculpted the soft clay of her breasts. 

She felt the caresses, the strong fingers, as his thumbs found her nipples. The blood rose in her veins. She became liquid.

On the bed in her apartment, she opened herself to him, contained him, devoured him, swallowed him. The brush of his hair, the salty savour of his skin, the stippled goose flesh, the long, washing strokes of his tongue.

In the morning, they walked to the bistro. He ordered a velvet Cappuccino for her, a double espresso for himself. She watched the crema cling to his upper lip as she lapped white foam from a teaspoon. She remembered him last night, hot and firm between her legs. As they sat, facing each other, she slipped her foot from her shoe, lifted it into his lap, and nudged him with her toes until he rested a secretive hand upon them. Held her there as he grew against her.

Afterwards, they walked into the square, found a bench beneath the plane trees. She felt the warm sunlight playing across the golden curve of her bosom. He had kissed her there.

She gripped his hand, and twisted herself into him.

'Would you like to paint me?' she said, 

'Paint you?' he said.

'Yes,' she said, 'naked?'

'I don't think I could,' he said.

'Why not?'

'I'm no good,' he said. 'I've no talent.'

'I'm sure that's not true!' she said. 'I'd love to see your work.'

'You would?' said he. 

'Of course.'

'Well then,' he said. 'Look over there. That house in the middle. I painted that. I've done lots round here, I'll point them out if you like, as we walk.'

Let Me Die In The Morning-time

Let me die in the morning-time
before the day has complicated things
and let it be now, in early spring
while the soil is warming
and the sun has hinted
at the colour in its cheeks

then plant me shallow
among sudden snowdrops
and crocuses

with the grass still wet
from the morning's crisp rain
with dark earth clinging to the spade

let roots creep between my ribs
and green shoots sprout

from my finger tips

there is a suggestion of warm bees
and sparrows can sing eulogies
perhaps blackbirds will chortle calls
among the first green flush of leaves

and then next day
when you have washed your hands and face
make a flask of tea
wrap sugared doughnuts in a bag
or lardy cake
and climb the high top of Melbury Hill

look back across the valley
to the places we spilled our childhood
Badger's Wood and Seymour's Bottom
the tadpole pond down Frenchmill Lane
with pointing fingers
trace maps across the landscape
to find Cann Mill amongst the thickening trees
spot the Higher Blandford Road
and the Lower
and search out the roof of the house where we once lived

mine has been a cluttered life
confused and spattered across times and place
and you may imagine patterns that never were

but this –
this was the chase beneath the skin
the quickening
the valley floor
the early store of buttery days
that has fed me always
that has kept me fat while I was thin

Home and Away

“We’re thinking, Dad... We’re thinking of moving.”

Christine watched her father’s hands as he washed the cups. Suds clung to his fingers as he lifted the dripping cup from the bowl and rinsed it under the tap. His wedding ring glinted through the bubbles.

“Oh are you?” he said, taking another cup and running the dish-mop around the inside. “Well I hope you’re not going too far.”

She felt a cold grip around her heart.

“You need to be in striking distance,” he said, “so I can keep an eye on you, eh.”

“Perth, Dad.”

“Perth? What do you want to go there for? Can’t say I know it really. Your mother and I stayed a night there on the way up to Orkney that year, but I can’t say I... we didn’t see much of it really, you know, just went to the b’n’b and straight off in the morning...”

“No, Dad...”

“We went for a stroll by the river - that was lovely actually, but more than that... Why? Has John got work up there or something?”

“No, Dad, it’s not...”

“I mean it’s not close but, well, I suppose it’s on the train line up through, eh... I mean Scotrail was pretty good, I seem to remember, but...”

“It’s not Scotland, Dad.”

“What..? Course it is, it’s what... fifty miles north of Edinburgh, isn’t it... something like that. We were driving then of course. I wouldn’t drive it now mind, not with my back...”

“It’s Perth, Australia, Dad. Western Australia. John’s family are...”

“It’s what? No, no, no, it’s definitely in...”

She saw the realisation cloud his eyes as he looked at her. He looked back at the bowl of bubbles and the cup slipped from his hand and splashed back into the bowl. Soapy water splashed onto the front of his shirt.

“Damn! Damn fool thing!” he said.

Christine reached for a tea towel from the radiator and tried to wipe at the wet shirt.

“Here, give it here,” he said, “I can do it.” He snatched the tea towel from her. “Damn fool thing!”

Christine grabbed the roll of kitchen paper and tore off a length. She squatted to mop at the pool of water on the floor.

“What are you... Leave it, will you, just leave it!”

“Sorry, Dad, I was just...”

“Leave it. I’ll get the mop in a minute. I’ll do it... Just ... Just... why don’t you go through. I’ll bring the tea in a minute. I won’t... I won’t be a minute. You go in’t room, I’ll bring it through. Do you want a biscuit?”

“No thanks, Dad.”

“I went to the VeeGee, John’ll want a biscuit... I bought a pack of... You go through and make sure he’s not mucking up the settings on the TV. I’ll be through in a minute.”

Christine popped the pedal bin open and dropped the kitchen towel into it. She turned and slipped out into the hall. She felt the tightness in her throat. Her cheeks burned red beneath her eyes. She couldn’t face John straight away. He was happy enough flicking through the channels on the television.

As she reached the sitting room door she stopped.

“I’m just popping upstairs a moment, love. I won’t be a min... there’s something I’ve been wanting to find.”

John was sitting on the sofa. He didn’t respond. She watched him for a moment looking from the TV to the remote and back again. He pressed a button and suddenly the volume boomed for a second before he found how to mute it again.

“John? Did you hear me?”

“Yeah... sure... whatever.”

She started to move towards the stairs but he hissed to stop her.

“Hey, Chrissie,” he whispered, “did you tell him?”

“Yes.”

“Is he, you know... how did he take it? Is he ok?”

“I don’t think...”

“He’ll ... give him time, he’ll get used to it. Did you mention ... you know...?”

“One thing at a time, John. One thing at a time.”

She climbed the stairs and was instantly engulfed in her childhood. While Mum and Dad had made many changes to the house downstairs - the kitchen extension, the French doors from the dining room - since Mum died nothing had changed. Upstairs they hadn’t even redecorated. The brown stair carpet, the textured wallpaper on the landing - the very air of the house felt unchanged, still, thick with the memory of dust and central heating. The towels hanging on the landing banister to dry - that slight odour of moisture from the bathroom, not damp but... used. The afternoon sun threw a certain glade of orange light from the frosted bathroom window out through the door and onto her bedroom door. Here was the ceramic plaque bearing her name that Dad had put up on her sixth birthday when she and Cicely finally stopped sharing and she got her own room. “Christine” in black cursive writing on a pink background with little primroses and bluebells framing the word. She fingered the dent in the door that Dad and Uncle Kev had made moving her new bed into the room. How mad Mum had been.

Christine stepped into her bedroom and cast her eyes around the familiar shelves: her childhood books; her collection of ceramic animals; the peacock feather in the heavy-based glass specimen vase. She glanced at the shade on the lamp, decorated with teddy bears dancing and hugging each other; the string of fairy lights strung across the wall above the bed; the array of stickers gleaned from her youthful magazines and stuck randomly across the headboard. She sat on the bed for a moment, felt the strange silence of memories crowding through her heart.

A noise from outside broke in upon her consciousness. She stood and walked to the window and drew back the curtains. Her father was stood in the garden, his hand resting on the bike shed. She couldn’t see his face but, silently, his shoulders were shaking.

Me reading 'Home and Away'

prompt: baby thoughts

In dreams I can fly

In dreams I can fly

it is simple enough
a tightening of muscle
a shortening of sinew
a concentration of blood

there is
no frantic flapping of limbs
no wild leap into the air

I simply close eyes

tighten the core
breathe
spell my exhalation
through whistling lips
until I float
up, up into air
suspended

from the bubble

of my skull

for in dreams I am free
of the poison of gravity

I tried it again today
in gusty hope
tried it as I walked home
in the belly of the wind

how certain I was
remembering the ease of dreams
feeling the fillip
beneath my arm pits
as my father
standing behind me
would slip his fingers
under these skinny pockets
these boney sockets

and gift me moments
of fumbling flight
feet flailing free

spinning round and round

carving circles in the trees with my heels

me laughing to dizziness

as the world

was smudged

into fast nonsense

but today I was wakeful
and it is too hard
to tense each muscle

around the liver
summon blood

from distant corpse corners

my will is soft
while I am awake
and my father

long dead

but one day
when my bones
are as hollow as birds
and left to drift sky-bleached
under gracious clouds
the ludicrous air will
whisper through them
of how I once could fly

Verdant Mist

It was four days after the funeral that the paint arrived. Verdant Mist.

Cherie had ordered it from Bardle's, the specialist supplier online. Many sample pots had been painted onto the chimney breast in the sitting room. A giant abstract mural of blues, greens and greys.

"I quite like it like that," said Derek.

"Don’t be daft," said Cherie, and so Derek had lost interest. He was happy to let her play with the colours but couldn't himself tell the difference between Cool Teal and Spearmint China. He certainly didn't prefer one over the other. After a while, Cherie had stopped asking his opinion.

"Just choose one," Derek had said. "If I don't like it I'll tell you. And if you don't like it, well... we can paint over it."

Lost Valley, Sphagnum Moss, Slaked Parsley.

"Too much brown," she would say or "Hmm, not so grassy!" or "Maybe green's wrong. I liked it yesterday, but the sun was out...maybe we should change the rug."

After three weeks, Cherie had finally settled on Verdant Mist – a pale green, not too vibrant, friendly with a hint of cucumber. She filled in the form online.

"We'll just have to wait and see," she said.

But the following day, on the way to Lidl, she stepped off the kerb. A Menzies delivery van was going too fast along Lady Balfour Way.

Derek collapsed in on himself like a house of cards on a rickety table.

Cherie's sister, Jeanette, came and dealt with the funeral arrangements. Cremation. They played Neil Sedaka's "Laughter in the Rain" as Cherie disappeared behind the curtains. The minister had a coughing fit.

Two days later Jeanette went and collected Cherie in a small plastic urn. A brown paper label named and dated the contents, "Mrs Cherie Downing - 16^th September, 2018."

For the time being, Cherie was placed on the mantlepiece in front of the patchwork chimney breast. Derek put her rings in the little Wedgwood dish next to her. He propped the Order of Service against the wall. She smiled out from the cover – a holiday picture he'd snapped in Caernarvon in 2014.

"You'll have to think where to scatter her, Derek," said Jeanette. "Let me know, won't you. I want to be there."

For three days, Derek was in fog. He sat on the sofa, looking at Cherie. Tears seeped from his eyes and dried on his cheeks.

He could hear her in the kitchen, he was sure. Or upstairs. She called his name. No. No.

Where could he scatter her? Where should he scatter her? Where would you want to be, Cherie?

On Thursday a DPD van pulled up outside. A young man brought a square box to the door. He had a thick moustache. Derek thought he was probably Turkish.

Derek opened the box and placed the tin of paint on the hearth.

For two more days, Derek sat on the sofa and looked at Cherie and down at the tin of paint below her. Verdant Mist. The tears had stopped but the emptiness in his chest remained.

The next morning he sat on the sofa drinking instant coffee from Cherie's cat mug. He looked at the chimney breast.

"Are you going to get off your arse and paint it for me, or what?" said Cherie.

"I’m drinking my coffee."

When he had finished, he went and fetched brushes from the cellar, took a screwdriver, flipped the lid of the paint open and contemplated Verdant Mist, friendly with a hint of cucumber. He spread newspaper on the hearth and pulled back the rug. He stretched masking tape along the edge of the skirting board and up around the joint between the wall and the tiles of the fireplace.

"You'll want a good straight line."

"Of course!"

He lifted Cherie down from her spot.

"Just the chimney breast,"said Cherie, "and don't forget to stir."

"It doesn't need stirring," said Derek, "it's emulsion."

He read the instructions on the tin.

Stir well before use.

"Told you," said Cherie.

"Well, you didn't used to have to," said Derek.

He went back to the cellar and found an old bamboo cane. Stirred the paint. Watched swirls of separated pigment appear and disappear in the creamy liquid. He dipped his brush into Verdant Mist. He dipped his brush into Cherie.

"Wait! What are you doing!?" said Cherie.

He loaded the wall – one thick stroke across the chimney breast – then up and down and Cherie clung, vinyl silk, to the lining paper.

Forty minutes later and Cherie was completely lost in Verdant Mist.

Friendly, with a hint of Cherie.

In Place Of Sorrow

In place of sorrow he grew a crust of incivility, a shell of resentment that most whom he encountered found difficult to navigate and ultimately, almost inevitably, walked away from. This proved to him without a doubt that he was unlovable and that they, whoever they might be, were inconsequential and irritating.

There was lodged within him a grizzled heart made from gritted teeth, clenched jaw, and snarling lip. He could picture it - the scar across the nose, the dragged lines around the forehead. This was his heart, woven from leathery sinew, not pumping blood but rather spitting venom into his veins. He knew this creature - it bought him solitude, preyed on the charity of others, stole their generosity, seized it and belittled it in the same moment. This monstrous heart hated love and kindness and beauty because these feelings showed him how he was wrong with him. His heart judged and closed down the world, spat at it, sneered at it, until it became redundant - worse than redundant - worthless, despicable.

The letter sat unopened on the mantelpiece for three days. A handwritten envelope. This implies that a human had generated it. He could tolerate correspondence from machines because it justified his world view - machines, computers, corporations simply wanted to take from him. This he understood. The taking was clear, unambiguous, unsullied by emotion. He used electricity, they took his money. It was logical.

But this - a cursive script outlining his name, his location... someone’s hand had done this. Someone who knew his identity, where he lived, who had some information to impart or some request that they wished to make - someone who needed something.

It could only cost him.

To open and read the letter would cost him - he would have to allow his mind some form of engagement in the task, to summon some sort of energy. Enthusiasm - no, never that. He would have to be prepared to receive information - to open himself, and receive. What if this information affected him? How could it not? It already had.  Whatever this information was that this person wished to relay to him, would demand a reaction, a response. His world would be altered in some way, threatened, challenged. Tectonic movements may take place. It would be safer to leave the letter there upon the shelf, unopened - safer still in the bin.

He took the letter from its resting place leaning against his father’s clock. He picked it up gingerly between finger and thumb, his other fingers spread to avoid contact. He carried it into the kitchen, placed his foot upon the pedal of the bin. Pressed. Waited until the mouth of the bin was fully open, dropped the letter in.

An hour later, he rose from the armchair beside the bookcase in the sitting room and went back into the kitchen. He had not been able to concentrate on the BBC Four documentary on the fire bombing of Dresden. The letter had leached its poisonous, demanding presence into his thoughts. He looked at the bin. He depressed the pedal again and peered into the black plastic maw. It had slipped from view.  He reached in, moved a plastic bag aside and spotted the letter slipped beneath it. He gripped the protruding corner and drew the tea-stained envelope towards him. The paper had absorbed liquid, tea, and the ink had run, softening the edges of the characters, blurring them together. It brought an irritation.

“Dah, stupid...!” he said.

He picked up a tea towel, dabbed at the envelope but simply made it worse. The wet paper began to crumble and roll under the contact of the cloth. His fingers detected a disturbance on the underside also - he turned the envelope and discovered drops of tomato sauce and a single baked bean, remnants of his meal from the previous evening. He found the mess intolerable.

“No, no, no...”

He wiped at his fingers and then at this reverse side.  As the cloth moved across the surface it lifted the corner of the sealed flap, a small blistered opening, an invitation to a fingernail to enlarge it.

“Damn you,” he said and slapped the letter down upon the counter. He knew now the letter would be opened.

“Not yet, you bastard.”

He took the kettle from the hob and filled it at the tap. As the water ran he looked through the kitchen window across the overgrown patch of grass that some would have called a garden. Through the fence at the bottom he could see into the neighbouring property. Two boys were running around, chasing a ball probably, although he could not see their faces - just bobs of hair over the fence top and flashes of a yellow t-shirt and a red one, glimpses as they passed gaps between the panels. There were shouts and laughter, too.

As long as the ball didn’t come over the fence he could tolerate these boys. He had been aware of them since they first moved in, without ever truly seeing them. He had known they were there and were growing up, but as children they were less of a trouble to him. It was only as people got older that they became heart-poisoningly annoying and intrusive. Men, women - all of them just out to take from him, to steal his peace with their knocking on the door and offering to shop for him. “Fuck off!” He would never say it, but he breathed it in as he waited for them to leave him alone.

Suddenly the whistling kettle penetrated his consciousness. He turned, and flicked the gas off.

“All right, all right,” he muttered.

And there on the counter - the letter.

“All right, all right!”

He crashed the cutlery drawer open and took out the butter knife he had sharpened to an edge. He slid the round point under the lifted flap and slit the letter open across the top.

With fingertip and thumb he withdrew the folded page within. He lay it on the counter - he would not be rushed. But the paper immediately found drops of water that had fallen unnoticed from the kettle filling.  Blots appeared at the corner and rapidly spread across the field of white. Fearing the ink would once again suffer, he lifted the paper and shook it.

“Damn! Damn you!”

He opened the folded page.

Again the cursive script - younger, female perhaps.

Sender’s address at the top right hand corner - Well, that’s not something you see much nowadays.

Underneath the address, the date - 22nd May 2017. Taken nearly three weeks to get here, he thought. He picked up the envelope again and studied the postmark - 19th May. Oh? Someone had forgotten to post it maybe - or didn’t know whether they should.

Who was this? At the bottom of the page, a signature and printed in capitals beneath it KELLY HARRISON.

Harrison... Harrison?

Just read the damn thing, he thought.

Dear Mr Sanderson,

You don’t know me, so I hope you will forgive my writing to you, but my mother, Mrs Evie Wright (née Harrison) gave me your address. She feels it is time for me to introduce myself, and so do I. She told me about you and how she now feels bad about how she treated you when she left with her baby - your baby - me, in 1981.

She hopes you might find it in your heart to forgive her after all these years. And so do I.