My Time in Govie Housing Draws to a Close

By | 3 August 2020

Most sit out front with no front teeth
but lots of heart
and smokes
Their cars in many stages of undress

I’d showed up with mum and dad
(while I still had one)
and a wheel chair
They’d got sick of carrying me
up the stairs

We nodded to Housing and the sunlight
coming in the front windows
and the next door lady gave me a key-ring
she’d made herself from leather
She gave the neighbour to my left a cut
above the eye with a smashed bottle

She would sit on the wall between us
and chat about life depression drugs
Certain days were bad
the ones that reminded her
of her murdered boyfriend
then she’d swing a baseball bat
at the night flying fucks
and striking out
The ones who dobbed her in
to the coppers were the worst

But she was kind enough to share
her music with me
through my bedroom wall
at 3 am – a thumping
good time

I’d chat to her feet dangling
from the wall while I dug
in the garden – and in the end
she was saved by a dog
who hated the volume up
and my sleeplessness exchanged
beats for barks
He wanted up and out
in the morning for walkies
so the benders had to straighten out
and while the pup didn’t take to men
he took his owner to a nice new house in the burbs
with a larger yard

I’m following in her footsteps by moving out –
my place now a parking lot
for boxes – the washing machine untethered
and the frigid air finally gone
The shelves unburdened with fresh ignorance
and the smell of the mould they’d tried to paint away
infusing everything

And although I was prepared
to leave behind the trees my dad had planted
currently in mid mad blossom
Azaleas and camellia sesanqua
fuscia-pink and holed up making their last stand
I wanted to bring the tiny pomegranate tree
he’d given me just before he died –
the roots still struggling
to live up to their name
still settling in
not yet branched out
into new fields
somehow address-less
I would have – and I tried –
had made a small attempt the night before
with the wrong kind of shovel
flat and square and useless
but it must have left some kind of mark
a trace of something wanted – something loved
which was enough
to drive some random neighbour
to yank it out that very night
grasp it by green matted hair
and there –
all gone

This entry was posted in GUNCOTTON. Bookmark the permalink.

Related work:

  • No Related Posts Found

Comments are closed.