An Unexpected Surprise

"Who's handwriting is that?"

"Don't know." My Dad took the envelope from my mum and turned it in his hands. "It doesn't look much like a card. That's not a Birthday card envelope."

He handed it to me. It wasn't weighted and it was flexible. This time of year I received cards by the bucket, it's all a part of having a large family, and each one had an identifiable hand writing. There's the coarseness of my Grandmother on my Mother's side, then there's the fairytale flick of my Auntie on my Father's side who also writes the cards from my their mother. While I'm normally oblivious to all of this, this particular card had peeked my attention.

"Should I open it?" It was ten days until my birthday and opening cards prematurely was sacrilege in this household.

"I don't think it's a birthday card." Mum said over the whistling of the Kettle.

So I ran my fingers under the corner, that childish excitement  filling me as the paper tore apart. My eyes lit up as I saw inside.

***

The pub was homely but new, the furnishings still crisp and clean, the hand dryers still so powerful they could burn the hands they might dry. It was friendly, the service was impeccable, from the specials to the wine list and the banter at the table they were brilliant. I ordered a bottle of Chablis and tried to explain grape varieties and regions to my Nanna. She concentrated hard but eventually gave up, turning to my brother and asking him about his school. My Granddad, jovial as ever gibed me on, "Tastes like grapes."

I shook my head in mock dismay and then my Dad joined in.

"I'm getting . . ." He rolled the glass under his tongue ". . . pissed."

My brother then broke from his conversation to remind my Dad he wasn't Lee Mack and that joke wasn't funny the last three times he had told it, in the same situation, possibly at the same table.

The waitress came over and cleared the coffee's and my Granddad took the bill. He laughed and joked with the waitress and flirted a little, he was so alive. Come the end of it he tipped generously and the poor girl had been lumped with some promotional offer and handed it over to me.

"There y'are, Lad. You're the expert." And he put his arm around me and I realised he wasn't mocking me at all. I felt the pride in the weight of that arm and took the little quiz from his other. I filled in my details.

***

The image washed over me. The front of the Fox and Goose. Inside just Happy Birthday and some printed offers on the back. My Granddad might as well have put the card in my hand himself, my head flushed. It was almost a year since I had said goodbye, but he still wasn't saying it back.

Funny isn't it really, how a simple thing like being nice to a waitress, can come back and reward you in a way you never thought of. You don't get anything for free. In life you get what you give. Thanks Granddad. That's one lesson I'll never forget.

Moonlight Serenade

The door was locked.  Whoever was screaming was now beyond Emma’s help.  She beat the door until her wrists ran crimson, her arms ached and tears streamed from her eyes.  She yelled and cried but the screaming never ceased, it rang in her ears only getting louder with each passing cry.  Emma beat her head against the door and fell against it exhausted.  The screaming continued and all Emma did was cry in to her hands.  What else could she do?

She woke. Her eyes stung and throat ached.  Her voice was gone.  Emma couldn’t hear the screaming. The silence didn’t calm her any though, all she could think about was that noise, the visceral penetration; she could hear it, like tinnitus, ever lingering, never leaving.  She shook violently and tried to stand but her knees buckled under her.  She might have cried had she the tears left to produce.  She needed to know what happened but the quiet little girl that lay before the girl had not the strength nor will to twist the handle and push in to the chaos.  So she crawled away. . .

The curtain’s break allowed the moonlight to serenade the broken young girl.  She shivered and convulsed in a pile on the enveloping mahogany floor, consumed by the night.  She might still weep.

Hours later the sun gently caressed Emma’s face.  The bids outside seemed to be singing Barber’s strings.  The door handle turned and Emma twitched, her breath heaved and she sighed, still asleep.  The warmth teased open her eyes.  She lay holding on to something.  She couldn’t know what it was, soft, comfortable. A pillow.

The door opened and Emma walked in.  All emotion washed away from her face.  The sun fell over two figures both lying on their backs in the bed, on the bed side table were medicine.  The woman’s medicine.  Emma’s mothers medicine, she thought.  Her father’s eyes were open but he couldn’t greet her that morning.  Her mother rested peacefully more so than she had been in years.  The bed sheets didn’t moved.  Only when Emma leant against them.  Emma kissed her mother’s blue lips.  She held her father’s cold hands.

Three days later they found her there.  In between her two most treasured loved ones.  The sunlight still warming her stone skin.

Morning Rituals

The clouds hung, low and grey, not daring to disturb the concrete landscape.  The floor vibrated; the chair, the walls, the ceiling, the very earth vibrated.  The world was washed out, we rattled past.  She clung on to her phone, as did each other member of society under the age of thirty then excluding the small thing in the pram, she attempted conversation.

“You read it?”

“No.” I was affixed to the tiny four inch screen held a foot from my face.  “Should I have?”

“You didn’t miss much.”  Jess was typing at the same time, this was a practiced conversation, one of us will have done the required work for the day and is required to tell the other that they didn’t need to read it and in fact cliff notes will suffice.  The Lecturer clearly agreed, despite her protestations, but if the lecturer can use cliff notes in the lecture slides and we can reference lecture slides, then we must be allowed to reference cliff notes.  The argument didn’t even hold up while it was running through my head.

Around the bus everybody was in the same situation.  All wishing for conversation and not knowing how to go about it.  There are no emoticons in reality, we have to attempt facial expressions.  That’s easier said than done at 7am on a Friday.

It was one of those irritating people that broke through the rumbling of the bus.  One of those morning people.

“My mum ate so many Pringles she had to go to hospital.”

A Love Letter

To the Wildest of us,

Once we took a walk,
Over green grass and under white clouds.
Arm in arm and through the park
Your face alight from laughter, so proud
he might have been to see us there.
He might have smiled upon us then.

The wind lashed that spring
but the sun that beat wouldn't be beat.
Do you remember? Is it too soon?
Do your cheeks still fill with heat?
What he might do to see us here.
He would smile upon us then.

We ate our soup, the three of us.
The dawn, the noon, the dusk.
It mattered little, the hollow mask
that, across our faces, painted smiles.
He could have sat with us there.
He might not smile upon us then.
If he was with us ever at all.


Now I don't see you often enough
and the time dwindles and the candles flicker
in the wind and rain.
I don't tell you often enough
I don't know if I have ever told you before
I don't know if there are the words to say
I don't know if you could hear them,
Each day a moment passes and you are with me
You will never read this and my heart breaks
like the first footfall on a frozen lake.
The surface breaks.

The day will come where this will need to be heard
Yet you will not have the ears to hear it.
I could read it now yet you could not comprehend it.
Just knowing this my heart breaks.

So simply I must vow
To tell you each and every day
in my own and special way
that "I love you".
And I remember that day
and each and every other day
That your smile told me you loved me.
Because I know
He would smile upon us then.

Your Loving Friend

Handing in my notice

I quit.
The hours are too long and unsociable
I never have time for myself
I spend all of my hours trying to please another
and for what?
Well they turn around
they look me in the eye
Lovingly
They spit in my face
They look in to someone else’s eyes
Lovingly

I’m done.
I don’t need this, the pay is crap
All of the things I want to do
Maybe if I quit I’ll be able to take up some.
I always wanted to be a rockstar
I can’t play a note
Or maybe a model
If I was a little taller
Or maybe a pilot
If I was a little smarter.

I’m handing in my notice.
In two weeks I give up.
You wont be seeing me around.
Hell! I wouldn’t come back here even if I had a choice!
Hell! At least it’s warm there.

To whom it may concern.
Don’t pretend like you’re surprised
The way you treat me!
You walk all over me and then I wash off the footprints
You walk all over me again
You walk all over me.

One day you might look back at this and think:
He was a good lad
always tried his hardest
more than to be said of most.

I’ll work my last two weeks
I’ll work it with a smile
I’ll work it with a skip in my step
Knowing it is my last two weeks.

The world’s Last Barman Poet

The French Martini

She stares across three feet of polished oak,
Her eyes belie the truth that hides inside
And yet she flirts and tells those practiced lies
he pays the bill and tips but she is mine.
I shake, caress the frost upon the glass
I pour, she tastes the perfect orgasm.
She fights temptation, perfect elation
I know my bed will be kept warm tonight.
Society’s spirit surrounding us,
Impassioned poisons pass between our lips.
In drunken lust, we screw, we drink, I drive.
Home alone, even Bacchus might be proud
I down the beer and pop another Z
Tomorrow, another day awaits me.

Blanc De Blanc

Empty, I don’t much feel like a poet
Expression is lie, translation is lie
Liquid courage slips in to my hollow
body and I allow myself a thought.
I struggle to sleep for having met her,
I cannot breath while she will not be mine
and yet, if never our paths diverged
If I had took the road less travelled by
perhaps she could still occupy my mind?
The wandering woman in white might walk
Across the frozen wastes, explore the vast
Hollow iceberg that contemplates myself.
But is she who she truly seems to be
Or just a shadow, not the one I dream.

Disarrono Chaser

The bottle runs dry – her hand is on mine,
musical notes played on the harp of her laugh.
Lips so close, only a moment apart
her warmth, her body, her hypnotic gaze
I know she’s mine, she must be mine.
The reigns pull tighter, why try to escape?
The moment lingers, the moment we touch
The lonely moment, a moment of love.
Or lust - I taste her, so sweet, so gentle,
Tongues dancing to a samba so sensual.
I am inside her, she’s in my soul
Her eyes close in passions powerful prose,
This is her art, her heart, all that she knows.
She gathers her things and walks out the room
I know this meant nothing -
nothing at all.