KEEPING SMALL
- Feb 14
- 1 min read
By Rach PS
When she was small, she imagined her bed
could fly away like in Bedknobs and Broomsticks,
kneel up, tap three times and wish.
There were other clues; mud mixed with piss
launched at the neighbours’ cars unprovoked,
a note in the spelling book signalled a bad influence.
The boys exposed themselves first, but when she did
there were consequences. Dad threatened to leave
after every weekend row. ‘Divorce!’ bandied about
like taking it for granted, leaving the tap running,
not checking the rear-view mirror. He didn’t mean it,
just snatched the hidden stash of fags and drove.
Tiny ears pinpointed a slight raising of voices
in an instant. Accelerated heart beats saved her
from sleeping as a duty. Wooden doors
didn’t stop secrets meeting the percipient ears
behind them. Mum adopted cats to kill the mice.
So, she coaxed them from behind brown boxes
for sandpaper licks on salty tears. There was peace
in the solace of toilet stalls on break times,
inevitability in detentions, and through padded bras
and migraine mornings, there was that one friend
who also loved Kurt Cobain, kissing her
in secret, whose mother said
she sensed lesbians in God’s house
whispering between walls.