Flower, Flower Beneath The Sky

Home

The road home was quiet, lonely, empty. Just like her, just like all those that lived there, all the neighbours. Dead quiet.

When she was younger, people used to tell her she'd be a homemaker, a home keeper one day. Those people told her to keep home intact, they told her that when that day came, she must care for home, provide for home, love home, cherish home. They said there was no place like home, they said, home sweet home. But she was younger, she didn't really give thought to their words, she forgot the shine she'd seen in their faces, in their eyes.

In her juvenile mind, she only had focus on those little sounds of approval here and there that made it look as if she were listening when really she wasn't. All her pretence was so she would be sneakily awarded those sensational sweets that she wasn't allowed. All she'd cared about was the gleam in her eyes and the melting pleasure in her throat at the end, not the lessons she should have been taking. She forgot to capture their light, she learnt the hard way instead.

As she took the quite long way home, detached from the world they'd chosen, their words returned to her, cold and biting. Like salt to wound, it seared her but the reminder was late. Too fucking late!

She wanted to shut them down, she needed it to stop but in the solitude that cloaked her like a heavy cloak, their voices singled out, high and above, silently loud. It was as though she'd become deaf to every other sound but theirs. And they drowned her, mercilessly in the quagmire of her depression.

You are blind to what you have till it's gone, lost...

She was home, she was almost home now. Everything was going to be alright. As she entered, no lights met her, no resounding laughter or warm engulfing hugs, no wafting aroma of food and bakery, no twang of scented candles or frankincense or that faint classical waltz playing in the background especially. They were the few lost things she'd learnt not to miss the harder way. It still poured.

She picked her way through the brambles within the picket fence. She was close. She tore at webs, branches lashing across her face. But it was worth it, she could see the glazed mound in the shadows, with its matching glazed headstone. She couldn't make out the engravings but she knew. They were engraved on her heart. She was home.

Her mind wrenched out the memory of a graceful woman that loved to dance in the rain. More vividly, she remembered how that woman had twirled with abandon in every rainy night howling when there was a full moon and calling out to a figure that had always stood in the shadows.
             
           Elizabeth Ann Collins
       Daughter, wife and mother
                    1978 - 2018
  ... a time to live, a time to die...
 
  But it wasn't time yet, mother. It was not yet time.

Home was mum. Where mum was, home was. But she'd failed, she failed to keep home. She was a bad home keeper, she hadn't listened hard enough. She hadn't cared enough for mum, she hadn't thought to take mum's pains. She'd lost her mum and everything she was. There was not much to keep now. Mum was dead. Mum was in a graveyard. And if mum was in a graveyard, home was a graveyard. Not anywhere else.

She run and fell, let her body hit the grave. Then she lay still, shaking with sobs. It was something deeper, much hurtful but meaningless. Waves of nausea hit her and she retched out her empty stomach. It was colder, she was wetter, her clothes stuck to her skin, her sneakers were soaked too, coated with mud. In fact the whole of her was muddy but she didn't care.

  Mummy will take care of me. She'll hug me after scolding me for being in the rain and she'll take me somewhere warm and dry. She'll make me a cup of hot chocolate and tuck me under a warm blanket. Then she'd sing me a lullaby while attending to my wounds. We'd be happy, though she wouldn't be pleased with the bandages. But we'd still be happy. Like old times, just like old times...

 She was home just like old times and that mattered now. She let the rain wash away her anxieties. Her demons could wait. She let the rain wash her clean. Mother was close, she could almost touch her. She smelt the castor in her mother's hair, the lemon in her clothes, the powder on her skin. Mother smiled into her face and she knew it. Yes! They'd be happy together.

I know we will be happy. We'll be happy together, forever.

She closed her eyes. It was quiet now, numb, unfeeling, painless. She smiled at the peace, allowed the winds carry her fears across its currents. She let the rain wash everything away.