Egg

Your shell is smooth and
delicate, like fine bone china.
Your weight, unique;
I make my palm a nest
for you, exquisite, oval stone.

Your fragility is supreme.
How precarious your
existance! You were
made to give life but lie
redundant, dormant,
one in a dozen.

A little womb, cold and
quiet. A bulb in
January soil.
A little cold world,
with a core of gold.

I will break you open
like parting clouds,
and expose your
golden orb. Or
you will shatter and
explode into sunshine.
Like a dropped teacup.

Oryctolagus Cuniculus

Today I made a pear and frangipane tart. I've just taken it out of the oven; it looks delicious. I peeled the pears with a knife, the way my mother has always peeled apples for crumble. I used to look up at her and wonder how she wasn't slicing her thumb. Now that the knife is in my own hands, I marvel that I ever wondered. When I'd finished peeling them, I took the chopping board over to a green bucket in the corner to scrape the green peelings in. Suddenly I was struck with heavy sadness, a phantom punch to the diaphragm. It felt a shame, a crying shame, to pour those peelings away into the compost. Such a waste...

I was thinking, you see, of our old rabbits. We would always save them vegetable scraps to eat, and now I felt that same pang of sadness every time I have to throw them away instead. Carrot peelings, potato skins, the tops of green beans and the bottoms of lettuces. I remember slipping my feet into my father's huge shoes to trudge out into the rainy back garden, a colander of leftover vegetables in my hands. I remember the scrambling sounds of rabbit claws against their wooden floor. The way they'd stand on their hind legs and clutch the wire mesh with their front paws in anticipation. Ears swivelling to hear my approach. When I poured my offering into their bowl they'd set to eating as though it was the first and last meal of their short lives; the best thing they'd ever tasted. Such simple pleasure.

I was given my first rabbit was when I was eight years old, after years of begging for puppies and kittens (my mother hated the former and my father detested the latter). She was grey, with a white belly, a black face, and a wild temperament. She bit me and scratched my feet; I loved her with my whole heart. She was the first of many, generations of mothers and wriggling pink litters under nests of down and straw. A dynasty of rabbits. The family tree is carved into my mind - a motley blur of soft fur and long ears and twitching noses. I can name every last one. I map my memories out using them as guides. They were better, to me, than any dog or cat. We'd coerce them into jumping hurdles, 'fetching' carrots, swimming in the pond. We'd stroke them into hypnosis. On their birthdays, I'd make them special rabbit cakes by layering grass and hay and rabbit food in their bowls and making candles out of carrot sticks.

Once, at a time when we had a mother rabbit and three of her daughters, they took it in turns digging an escape tunnel. By the time we found it, it was longer than the broom handle we stuck down into it. I remember the way they brought up rocks to the surface in their teeth.

I remember them dying, one by one. Naturally, or by those necessary needles held between gloved fingers, killing kindly. I held their limp bodies in my arms or stood outside vet's doors, sobbing.

Now their old hutch lies empty at the bottom of our garden. The rabbits are gone, but they appear to me in recurring dreams, over and over. Rabbits in plagues and hoards, all shapes and sizes and colours, running around me in their thousands. They have burrowed into the recesses of my soul; my heart is a warren full of rabbits.

Cold Feet

In my bedroom, the windows are as thin as the ice that forms in garden water barrels in early British winter. The cold seeps through the slats of the white shutters and slithers into bed with me, where it curls up at my feet and licks my toes. The walls, and my bed sheets are all the colour of January morning skies; the iciness permeates my  psyche. In summer, it is a cool refuge from the hot streets, hazy with the scent of melting asphalt. In winter my frozen appendages keep me awake at night. My hands nestle into warm places: between my arms and sides, between my thighs. But my poor feet! They are helpless. They rub together to retain some heat, but in vain. Their friction sparks no fire. They are just two cold lumps of flesh, like twin trout in a freezer drawer. How they long for socks to warm them! My selfish body ignores their pleas; it's warm, under the duvet, and besides, it has its own furnace inside its chest. The feet send their telegrams through the nerves and the brain tries not to hear them. But sleep is prevented, nevertheless.

One day, perhaps, my feet will just drop off their respective ankles and hop out of bed. Perhaps they'll walk to the sock draw and try to pull it open with their toes. Or perhaps they'll wander off around the house in search of some one else's slippers, or a radiator against which they can press their icy soles and sulk. Let them go. I don't care, they were stopping me from sleeping. Besides, they'll come crying back in the morning when they realise they can't tie their own laces.

Small things.

A small, white leather shoe
with a silver buckle.
Its sister fell off in Paddington Rec,
or Queen's Park, perhaps.

A small, once white teddy,
once soft fur worn down to
a porridge-like consistency.
Bead eyes slightly shattered;
threadbare, sporadically.

A small t-shirt, the colour of
pistachio ice-cream. On the
front, a small story, in French,
about a rabbit's vegetable patch.
Illustrated with carrots and radishes.

A small rubber doll, pink and
small enough to fit in the palm
of my hand. When squeezed
it hisses from its tiny oval mouth.
In the bath it spouted water.

These small things sit archived
in my small bedroom. The
small spaces they occupy
would scant be different without
them. Nor would I;

but their small presence
brings small happiness
to my small existence.
They remind me of
how small  I was.
They remind me of
how small I am.

Anger

I climbed the stairs as fast as I could manage. This was not very fast, as my heavy bag was slipping from my shoulder and my suitcase, held awkwardly at my side and lifted not quite clear of the steps by burning arm muscles, was colliding with my shins and thighs. Later my left leg would be grubby with blue-grey bruises. But at the time I barely felt it. I felt only the lactic acid building above my knees, the pain in my arm and shoulder, my lungs on fire. I reached the top and with the last force I could muster, thrust my suitcase up onto the platform. My lungs breathed brief relief but only for the slightest of instants before my eyes registered the emptiness of my surroundings.Something was missing. Something of great significance was missing from the scene. I had missed it. I had missed the train.

A decidedly unattractive woman in her sixties kindly informed me of this. Oh! Thank you, kind stranger! You have surely saved my life, for had you not warned me of this, I might have tried to mount the steps of the train that is no longer there, and I would have fallen to my death on the tracks! I turned away to deprive her of the delicious schaudenfreude she no doubt sought. I threw my bag to the ground in the awful anguish of having relief granted then immediately snatched back from one’s trembling grasp. Tears came, hot and fast, much too fast for me to catch them back. Much faster than I’d been able to run. I kicked over my case. And I swore, violently, explosively, in my mother tongue. The Queen’s English, as only the Queen knows best.

Oh, I’d seen it coming. I knew when I rang you that it’d be just that little bit too long before your car pulled up to greet me. The lacklustre urgency we both displayed, putting the case in the boot. Slamming doors, but only gently; speeding, but not too speedily. When I got out, I stopped to kiss you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. Perhaps I knew that it was too late anyway, that I might as well. An urgent, yet lacklustre kiss. Mercenary. Our teeth would have smashed had we no lips to take the hit. And then, I ran.

Now I was angry. Furiously frustrated, as though I was angry at myself. I wasn’t. I was angry at you.

How could I be? You’d only meant well. I was grateful for the lift, and I wasn’t the only one with somewhere to be. It’s hard, too, to be angry at those we’re close to. As though there’s a space next to our heart the anger can’t quite get to. A blind spot. I couldn’t be angry with you because the anger was just bouncing back off my own ribs. Besides, the train wasn’t the only thing I was going to miss.

So I just stood, angry at no one in particular, crying at unfortunate circumstance, in the queue for a new train ticket. I could feel the glances of those around me. The crying girl. Why do I find myself, time after time, weeping on train platforms? Why do their eyes lack even a mote of concern?

I exchanged my ticket for a later train. The man at the desk, at least, was quietly sympathetic. I even got money back; the later train was, in fact, a five hour bus replacement, slightly less costly, but the fine time margin I’d later be cutting could cost me dearly. Dejected, I sat down on a station bench, letting my bag fall to my feet.

In front of me, there was an information desk. A gentleman in a suit approached it and began conversing with the people behind it. He was behaving slightly strangely; his gestures were rather exaggerated, and his voice a little too loud. Then I heard that his speech wasn’t quite right, either. I looked to the faces of the people behind the glass. Their bodies were rather stiff; their faces were frozen between uncertainty and amusement. The man kept gesturing to the bag at his feet. It was multi-coloured plastic. He bent down, then up again, then down, and from the bag he pulled out a dirty neck-brace and a crumpled sheet of paper. It was then that I realised he was mad, for want of a more scientific term. Quite mad.

He carried on shouting and gesticulating at the people behind the glass. He looked lost, and frustrated. The woman was chewing gum in an exaggerated manner, and from where I was sitting, it looked as though she was mocking him. My heart filled with pity. I wondered what was wrong, what he was trying to ask them. Then he turned back to the glass and they’d closed it, and left the kiosk.

The man picked up his plastic bag and stormed over to where I was sitting. As he approached, I saw how filthy his suit was, how unkempt his hair was. Just in front of me were four public telephones arranged around a metal pole. He placed his bag back down and picked up a receiver to put against his ear. His hands didn’t move quite the way you would expect them to. The fingers were purplish, and a little too short. I was curious as to who he was phoning. No one, it seemed, for he put no money in, and punched numbers at random, mumbling all the while. Before the phone could even hypothetically have dialed, he shouted, “C’est pas la peine!” and moved on to the next phone, to carry out the same ritual.  What’s the use! It’s not worth it! Worth what? To whom was he trying to make a phone call, in his world, estranged and not parallel but perpendicular to my own? His anger seemed feigned; it was as though a child was playing the role of an angry person. The pacing back and forth, the gestures, the comments loud enough for everyone to hear, though directed at no one in particular. But he feigned nothing. To him it was entirely real, this anger at the world around him. He stormed out of the station. I saw him cross the road and then he was out of sight. 

My own anger had dissipated. I had seen it parodied before me as though upon a stage. It was not an act I wished to play. C’est pas la peine.

Moving: a Haiku

Five black bin-bags, two
boxes, a case. The relics
of my last six months.

April Fool

"Hey Tom! Guess what? I'm moving to Nigeria!"

"What?"

"April fool!" 

"No but really, guess what?"

"What?"

"I'm moving to Edinburgh!"

"Really?"

"Ha! No, April fool!"

"Urgh. It's too early in the morning for this. Why does April Fool's have to be before midday?"

"So I can mess with you better. But no, really, guess what?"

"Hfffffffffff... what?"

"I won the lottery!"

"Ha, ha. April fool?"

"April fool! Actually, I crashed your car."

"Really?"

"No. Not really. But I did kill Pablo."

"Pablo's fine, he licked my feet this morning."

"Damn it! Okay. Well, I have something else to tell you. It's quite serious."

"Okay. Sure. Shoot."

"I have Chlamydia."

"Well you didn't get that from me, so that better be an April fool!"

"How did you know!? Haha, okay. You got me. But I should probably tell you the truth. I'm pregnant."

"Hahaha. Very good. How are you coming up with these?"

"April foooooool!"

"Oh wow! You got me, I am SO gullible."

"Okay okay. But anyway, there is something I've been meaning to tell you. For a long time. I don't think we should see each other any more."

"April fool? Nice, didn't see that one coming!"

"Ha. Yeah. Except, it's not."

"Oh yeah sorry, I'm not playing along very well. Tell me again."

"I'm breaking up with you, Tom."

"Really? Oh my God, I'm so heartbroken, don't leave me babe, give me one more chance!"

"Look Tom, I don't have any more chances to give. I've had enough. It's over."

"Persisting with this one eh?"

"I mean it. I'm not taking the piss any more. It's over. I'm breaking up with you."

"Do you want me to cry? Or will kissing your feet be enough?"

"Tom stop. Look at my face. Am I joking?"

"I....uh. You are joking aren't you?"

"No, Tom, I'm not."

"What? Wha - I don't understand?"

"What's to understand?"

"What the - Seriously? This is how you're breaking up with me?"

"No. APRIL FOOL!!!!"

"I hate you. You're a terrible person. Get off me! Ha a haa noooo I'm trying to be angryyyyy don't tickle me!"

"Okay sorry sorry sorry. It was a mean joke. I am pregnant though."

"What? Really?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"Oh."

"Yeah."