Drabbles

The Message Tree squats like a heavy-weight lifter. In its wide, scabby trunk is a hollow, where the inhabitants of the Forest drop their letters. Replies grow like fruit.

Posting your third unanswered message, you sigh. You’ve been waiting days and walking through the clearing every few hours, just to check.

You know he cares, but maybe not enough. Giving into the weight in your gut, you sink down.  

Maybe something’s happened! No. He’s just too busy running his Kingdom.

Life carries on outside the Forest. Still, you wait; for him to care enough or for you to care less.

You fall for his smile, but he doesn’t even stumble. Something squeezes your chest, tightening every time you think of him.

It’s like an elastic band is wrapped round your heart.

With time the elastic loosens, and other things seem important again. But then you see him. All it takes is, “Hey,” and, “I’ll see you tomorrow”. You hold your breath. The elastic tightens.

But you don’t see him tomorrow, or the next day. The elastic loosens, because it’s not tied to him, it’s only wrapped round you.

Maybe one day it’ll slip off completely, but not whilst you hold on.

An accident forces me to take the scenic route. Over roller-coaster, country roads, a sleek, black pickup follows too close.  

We’re stopped at unmanned road works. The temporary lights stuck on red. Tapping fingers on the steering wheel, I expect the pickup to overtake. But it doesn’t.

The lights eventually turn green.

But round the next bend a mountain of hay trundles at 20mph. The pickup still follows.

It’s like a stray dog, unwelcome at first, but now part of this silly adventure. But at the next round-about we part ways never to know, even if we do meet again.

In a crow-black sky hangs a white-sun. A face made from shadow calls to me. Wide fluffy stairs, the colour of driven snow, descend to earth, like the steps of St Paul’s. They invite me up to a world of absolute beauty, of black and white.

But when I get there, I find a cold place. Still beautiful, but empty. Empty except for a million silver pinpricks moving away like friends once loved, now lost.

The white-sun is only a mirror, reflecting the yellow one I left below.  It’s heart, is a grey rock that, has forgotten how to love.

A little girl looks up, but all she can see is cloud.

“I can’t see it.”

“What?”

“The aeroplane.”

Registering the buzz through the to do-lists piling up in her head, mum says, “It’s above the clouds.”

“Could we get a brush?”

“A brush,” repeats Mum, the request filtering through her mental organisation. “Why do you need a brush?”

“To clear away the clouds and see the aeroplane.”

All thoughts swept away, Mum laughs and crouches down.

“But my arm only goes this high,” says the little girl reaching up. “Mummy?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have to get a really big brush.”

Turn left at the Fairy Garden, with its toadstool chairs and frozen pixies. 

Beware of the singing nettles, if they graze you, you’ll be forced to warble melodies for a year and a day.

Once over the giant tracks, you’ll pass the multiplying donkeys.

You must cross the Greeting Grasses, waving in the wind, and then enter the Angry Wood. A gloomy tunnel of looming trees and brown shadows.

Avoid falling in the ravine, by following the Fluttering Bows, to the sun rising over the sea.

Now you can relax, and remember the journey, to the mountain and the lake.

My birthday has always been my special day, my selfish day. The day I came into this world. The day I get what I want.

Sinking into the deep-pile of the new carpet, I carry a gift of flowers. A beautiful winter bouquet; the white of snow, the lilac of glaciers and the blue of cold mornings, all mixed together with evergreen.

But even though it’s my birthday, the flowers aren’t for me.

They’re for her, for the woman standing by the open kitchen door.

Stepping over the grandchild, my child, playing by her feet, I give my mum flowers on my birthday.

Swaying in a dark night club, she waits for a song she knows.

Then a chord sparks a light in her eyes. A beat thumps under her heels. A voice vibrates against her skin and a melody stirs her heart. 

Catching her friend’s eye, they exchange a grin in anticipation of lyrics they can sing-along to.

Adding their shouts to the clamour, and their arms to the air, they escape.  For a few minutes they’re in Forever, surrounded by all the people she’s sung this song with and danced these dances with.

Now this friend is part of her forever.

I walk in a bubble, unseen by any eye. Its boundaries are flexible and there are many layers. The limits of the bubble are my fault-lines.

Other people enter my bubble, because of blood, choice, geography and history. Some are like fixed features, others welcome visitors or passing acquaintances, but most are strangers: the people on the bus, the lady at the checkout, the delivery guy, the man on the street, the driver that just cut in.

If you cross my fault-lines, I have a responsibility for you.  But if you’re in my bubble, then I’m in your bubble too.

A chair should be a comfort, a relaxation, somewhere to take the weight off. But the chair in which I’m waiting is none of those things.

Its arms restrain me in their embrace, rough padding scratches my bare legs and the back digs into my spine.   My palms sweat, my fingers fidget with a loose thread and my eyes dart about avoiding eye contact.

Finally, my name is called.

Escaping from the chair’s clutches, I race into the arms of a different chair, a comfortable, soft, reclining chair…in the dentist’s surgery. At least I don’t have to wait anymore.