Skip to main content

Lights

I am awoken from the deepest sleep. The night world is a blur in front of me. I know I am in a white van and I know who is driving. I am five.
My mother leans over me. I can smell her breath and the heat from it leaving a damp patch on my cheek.
"Look at the lights," her whisper is low and urgent.
They are just street lights. But they go by in such a rush, the trails running off them almost creating daylight.
I sit up beside my mother, watching until we left the outskirts of whatever town we were in.

Comments

themindofwilliam said…
You have painted a picture in my mind so vividly...I feel as though I was there. Thank you B.
Friday, 4 June 2004 at 09:37:00 GMT-4
Queenie said…
I am glad you were able to come along on the ride.
Friday, 4 June 2004 at 10:04:00 GMT-4
cbeck said…
I remember doing that. It was the most great fun. And letting your eyes unfocus so the lights blur... beautiful lazy days.
Saturday, 5 June 2004 at 05:00:00 GMT-4
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unending Paper Chase

You check in on me when you get your break for lunchtime now. You never used to. You ask me, "Are you all right?" You breath in and out hard once through your nose, like it is a chore to even ask. It seems to me that for you everything is an obligation, even holding my hand. Everything you do doesn't feel like anything more than surveillance now. I don't want the days to end and it is getting harder to sleep at night. I am starting to feel sick, like I have the flu. I'm always cold. But I haven't eaten much lately. My stomach is filled with acid. I smile at you anyway. I write two letters a day. One to keep you smiling and one that tells of the truth, but they both look the same. You do not know that I form certain words and sentences in a way that triggers me, in a way that reminds me of what is real. It is something that I started doing in grade school for tests, so that I could easily remember the answers, and then later, so my mother would not underst...
3 comments
Read more

Boxing Day

Countless times, on the weekends when you are here, you leave for me a stream of yellow in the bathtub. Something angled wrong in this 160 year old building. Sometimes you hit the tiles, as you whip your dick to the left to spray. Do you hold a finger over your pisshole? Do you laugh inside your head? I don't want to know. She bathes in there too.  I have been kind even letting you here. It is only because I love your father.    It is May or June, I don't remember. As sickness washes over me and the rest of the planet too, it can be easy to lose track of time. We tend to the plants, stroke their leaves and name them all. We watch the cat grow fatter, as she lolls in the sun on the stolen chair cushion she's dragged to the hard cement balcony floor. I feel like I know Gamer Chad better than myself and she complains about Jordan Peterson. She can't stand his voice.  But I am more tired and angry on weekends. I tell my her so. I tell her my solution. She tells me she...
Post a Comment
Read more

Below One Eye

It's just a phase, the Moon says to her, when she tells him she can't sleep. Up again, at 6 a.m., tossing and turning through fitful dreams. The sort of dreams that say, You can still have this, if you want this. Weeks of them again now. They are not unpleasant, especially if she can wake herself up fast when she realises where she is. Before she sees his face. She has taken to arming herself with protection. She conjures up her older brother's face and he brings along his wife. They stand beside her and help wake her up. "But if you don't want to," her brother says, leaves the offer on the plate, "I can kill him instead." But I disagree. He doesn't want to die. And that's such a shame. It is the end of winter now. It holds on like the cat who doesn't want to be picked up. The hateful sort of cat; the kind who would spit at you instead of nuzzle. And that makes it hard. Not to want This. She has said nothing to him, that she hasn't...
Post a Comment
Read more