The Lightship
It sails, across carpet oceans, under viaducts made of table legs and passing feet, around the books they bought to teach you how the world was conquered by men who were once small boys like you. It glides around islands made of sugar bowls, your sister’s pencils driftwood that your beacon must warn ships about, through the harbour, where your parent’s wedding china stands in monument to who they might have been. The whistle of the kettle is a steam engine, you hear the clatter of a port in cutlery, the gravy boat is a cargo ship, thick with the promise of molasses. Only the cat notices. You lay railway track to carry goods from the quayside to its paws.
They tut. You have tried to be your sister; dependable, industrious, but each time you think you’re getting close to emulating her poise, her ability to blend into the background of their dramas, land slides out from under you. You are untethered. Adrift, you chart a voyage in salt, circumnavigate globes made of deflated footballs and week-old balloons.
Each time you move, they throw a party, buy modern furniture, launch new lies into new rooms. At night, they regale you with vital facts about this latest city, tuck historical figures into your bed to walk your dreams. Your sister names them dutifully. There are always presents, gift wrapped apologies for each unmooring, which double as distractions from their endless arguments. The tiny lightship has slipped its anchor, fits so snugly in the palm of your hand that you carry it from kitchen to dining room to parlour as if it were a compass and you, your parents and sister were trawlers. This time you pray it will guide you home.
Disappointment at Not Visiting the SS Great Britain
From my father’s face, you’d think my mother had told him she was leaving or worse, had decided to elope with someone young enough to be his son, like the boy on the ticket counter with the floppy fringe, who had shrugged sympathetically and tried to hold my father’s gaze when he told him how far we’d come and that my brother was studying Brunel, so what better way to learn about the man himself than to set foot on what was arguably his greatest invention? The boy had stifled a yawn, apologised and suggested we head up to Temple Meads or take a stroll across Clifton Suspension Bridge instead but as my father’s neck began to turn red, it felt like watching mercury rise the way it does if you plunge a thermometer into hot water and by the time he’d slammed his hands on the desk so the miniature Brunel who was balanced on the till had bounced off and hit his head on a coffee cup, my father’s ears were crimson and his voice had assumed the tone he reserved for enormous let downs, like when the council refused an application to extend our driveway or the time my mother said she thought we’d like to get on a plane and go somewhere, instead of spending all summer and our savings on petrol, culture and driving. “This,” my father stated, from his vantage point atop the walls of a castle, “will enrich their education. They should be grateful.” He spent the rest of that afternoon massaging his bruised ego with facts about the defensive systems of motte and bailey castles, while my brother and I tried to imagine our mother around the pool in a bikini in Marbella, instead of traipsing up a hill in her sensible shoes.
My father loved Victorian discipline and he held Brunel with such high regard that we almost forgot to breathe when our plans became threatened by gridlocked traffic. “We should’ve left earlier,” he roared, although he had made us late by refusing the bowl of cereal my mother offered because breakfast is the most important meal of the day and he wanted to savour it before we hit the road. “Did you check the opening times?” my mother asked. “Did you?”, he responded, although we all knew he was the only one who cared about this trip, that the rest of us would’ve been happy to stay home with our thoughts.
“Brunel had a daughter”, my father declared, as he spooned out the last of his egg and I wondered if she had ever felt the weight of his disappointment crush her like freight or longed to be a passenger in her own right, instead of his cargo. I imagined her now, one hand on the ship’s wheel to seal her own fate, another on her father’s shoulder, wrestling herself free.
Stains
Your ma always said the truth will come out in the end, the way she’d bundle your dirty socks into the machine, and you’d watch as the suds frothed brown, then white as your dog’s slobber, until she pulled them out clean. Cleanliness was next to Godliness, she reckoned, but she made you wash your mouth out when you called Father Patrick a perv because he needn’t get so close during Communion, and you didn’t understand why he felt the need to place his hand on your thigh.
“You have such an imagination,” she’d say and shrug as if you were asking what she thought your da would like for dinner, then dropped her rosary beads into your lap, as if Hail Marys could fix the situation. You held them between your thumb and forefinger and squeezed, the way you’d like to do to that thing between Father Patrick’s legs. But you were just a girl and they assumed you were a heathen, so revenge would have to wait, since your ma was not listening and your da was willing to marry you off to the first boy who offered to break you like a horse.
You took a chance on the only way out that wasn’t spreading your legs, though the sea made you so queasy, you thought for a minute Father Patrick had put more than his mitts on you. When you stepped on land, you took great gulps of city air and thought of your ma, always cleansing the world of the sins of her children. “Ah,” she’d have said as she ran a flannel across your dusty brow, “it’ll wash.” Ma, you wanted to tell her, shutting the door that last time, some stains can never be cleaned.
Alien Buddha Press 