Running Away

INT, afternoon.

Paulie: Has it stopped ringing now?

Kerry: It comes and goes. At night it’s worse. My jaw hurts when I swallow. At least I should lose some bloody weight now.

Paulie: Sometimes he hits me hard, too.

The Date

William kept his shoes on as Kerry walked barefoot on the beach. She, in a tie-dyed oil-spill dress, high neck, high hem, showing off long, slender legs. He, somehow pulling off handsome with a fag constantly on the go, wearing navy trousers and light blue, flappy-collared shirt.

The Forest

You feel safe as you traipse alone, drunkenly, from the road into the first fair branches of the forest. Only the moon, rapier silver, lights your way, as you wend through trees to that familiar clearing. At peace in this now-still scene of teenage fumblings, you sweep cigarette butts to the edge with your boots. You build a small fire, set it burning with your second-last match, and hunker down, pulling jacket and blanket round you into oblivion.

Say that Again

“Say that again.”

My eyes held his, heart pounding, deathly calm.

“If Jamie was alive, he’d beat the shit out of you, and love it, too,” he snarled.

I felt each word land and let the volcano erupt inside of me, pounding Dad, right and left, again and again across the face.

Dawning on Me

His ghost stole in with the grey fingers of dawn.

His back wheel spinning, glimpsed from inside the grocer’s, while I queued for a Cadbury’s Applause. The bike on its side, handlebars on pavement.

Then he was beside me. Emotions kaleidoscoped.