I come from home-made white sauce on cauliflower dressed in Sunday best and ivory-handled knives and forks lying side by side on the dining room table; from home-brewed elderflower champagne, hidden in my brother’s wardrobe; from sea-salted air, frost forming on the inside of our bedroom window, breathing out to warm frozen fingers; from getting dressed in front of three electric bars, shivering and holding our skirts and knitted tights to warm in the heat; from sticky fingers and Fry’s five creme chocolate treats on a Saturday night; from learning to swim on a pebble beach walking a mile across mud flats to the edge of the water lapping at my universe.
The past is pacing outside the Pier pub screwing up courage to walk into the crowded bar. Remember being 16-years-old grown up, you in your Afghan, me in brown corduroy sipping pineapple juice for long enough to catch his eye and a snatched kiss in the dark. The past is working at Hales cake factory during a heatwave, eating our melted lunch on the wall by Tickenham road. Remember how sweat would trickle down our backs and form damp patches as clouds of ladybirds stained the pavement brown. The past is riding on the Cole brothers’ tractor and chasing late evening shadows in the swaying grass. Remember how we leapt across the haybales and twirled to 10CC’s silly love songs in the embers of the sun that last summer before I left.
What’s past is the moment I saw you kissing her at the New Year’s Eve disco. I come from the ache of betrayal and learning to unremember how you wished me a happy new year to the dying notes of Bohemian Rhapsody.
I'm a linguist, musician, traveller, published poetry writer and retired award-winning communications director. Awarded a BA Honours degree in Creative Writing in 2022, I now pursue my love of life, flash fiction and travel memoir.
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