Bright Lights

Roast chicken, potatoes, carrots and green beans soaked in a lavishly thick gravy, playing scrabble on long Saturday afternoon lazily by the fire whilst the rain pours down outside. Crunchy bacon sandwiches with thick slices of white bread, fresh spring morning lying in bed with the sun streaming through my windows.

Memories, they play heavy on your mind, taking you in and reaching back. You don’t necessarily want to be there again but it can’t be helped. There are also the good ones, the ones you cherish close to your heart, vividly reenacting in your mind over and over and the painful ones that can still rip your heart apart no matter how much time has passed.

Years have gone by and I have eventually decided to lay my demons to rest, believe me this isn’t a decision I have taken lightly. It is almost fours ago to the day I left, then I had big plans, ambitions. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a hopeless dreamer just a girl with a plan. So ok, I abandoned my family and left without so much as a goodbye. But that’s family right, what about the whole forgive and forget theory? Surely they will still love me, I’m their daughter.

So here I am standing behind a bush outside my parent’s house, practically hiding. There’s a new car in the driveway and the garden is tidier but I can tell they still live here.  The same bad parking and hanging baskets unmistakably the work of my mother. The curtains in the front room are drawn, the soft lighting of the television escaping through the gaps. I wait with baited breath, one push of a button is all it takes for me to be eighteen again so naive and unaware of life’s tragedies.

"Clara, is that you"

A voice in the dark familiar yet wrong, old and worn out not the youthful father I had left behind. A name forgotten, I had been Rose for so long now it seemed forever. I saw his face delicately wrinkled by age. Falling into his arms I can smell home. His face softens as tears roll down his cheeks, washing away the pain and hurt.

"Bill, is that you out there? Please come back inside...Clara!"

My dear beloved mother so tired looking, did I do this to her? She’s never going to want to see me again, I’m such a fool. She takes my hand firmly, guiding me to the door.

"Sweetheart, please come inside and I’ll put the kettle on and we can talk. Bill, grab any bags she has and for God’s sake man pull yourself together!"

I still haven’t said a word, I can’t my mouths so dry. My heads so confused. What would I say, ‘oh hi, how have you been? I didn’t get famous, I just owe my drug peddling boyfriend seventy five grand’, I’m sure they’d love that.

I should have stayed away, I can’t I won’t tell them. But I can’t lie, he’s after me and he knows where they live.

What have I done?

My death warrant has been signed and I’m dragging them into hell with me.

Box

pack you in a box
your inactions affect my reactions
sad
angry
confused
deep underground you go

my box is small
vast and neverending
optimism is buried deep there
struggling to find its way out to the light

alone without my box
the clouds clear
cares
woes
vanish up into the sky
like a ballon scaling the heights

with you near my box is heavy
decisions unmade
life unplanned
listen to your heart
decide

come back and help me
we'll bury my box far away from here
the sun will come out
and we will live