Playbacks

I have been clearing out my room ready for the move, (you'd be surprised how many insects and coins we have surrounding us), and I found this on some till paper from work. Something I scribbled out a while ago, and I quite liked it. I'll pop it below.

But an update on my year, I have started the book I want to write. One page in, I like it so far. It'll be a series of different people's lives. And the boxes are popping up round the house. I have found myself wondering into rooms and feeling confused, that something doesn't feel right. The candelabra will have gone, or the mirror isn't there. It's very strange. Tonight I helped Jess Sparey take our - much used (ironic comment) - exercise bike away. It's all very peculiar, to see my childhood being stripped down into fragments in front of me. I get one more farewell to the bits and pieces that shaped me and then they are going in the bin, or being driven far away.

Tonight Mum and I fell apart about the whole thing really. I'd thought of how much I'd miss my dog Spud, but not really realised how much I'd miss my batty flatmates. There's Rob; he's this quiet practical guy. But sometimes he comes out with things that make you wonder how sensible his thoughts are. He moves things as well... you can guarantee if something that's always lived in the same place has been relocated elsewhere that he's been the culprit of it. He's always, always calm. And then there's my other flatmate, Fiona. What can I say. She's fucking mental. She once woke up at 3 in the morning, couldn't sleep, so went and sent an email to someone. At 7 that morning she was complaining and panicking about why they hadn't replied. And she puts condoms in my sandwiches.

I will miss them. It's going to be strange picking through lunch and not knowing why it's all in order. Or looking for something and finding it right in the place you expect it to be. Mind you I am moving in with James so who knows what that'll open my eyes up to.

PLAYBACKS

I was little when it had happened.
Didn't think anything of it.

Fragments.

Mum used to smile at me to reassure me.
Everything's okay.
She used to stroke my neck at bed time;
Take me to Auntie Karen's
Before Dad got home.

Didn't think anything of it.

I was lying in bed when the playbacks started.
Smashed glass, grey skin,
Blood even.

They told me, the ketchup bottle had smashed.
Looking back, we only bought
The plastic bottles.

Easier to get the last bits out.

I don't think Mum ever got sick.
I think he was.

Grandma Irene never told me she'd taken up rum.
Rum made her cry,
But no one explained
So I stopped asking.

But the playbacks.

They show it in HD 3D colour.
Memories I've dug up from the very corners.
Where her hands were,
The hands that stroked my neck, flat up
Towards him.
"Don't."

Not quite the game they told me it was.
I've learnt that from the playbacks.