Mrs Brown comes every Tuesday, To pick up her daisies. Two pounds and a kiss to pay me in pursed fees.
I wrap the stems in paper, smile but wipe my lips after. It doesn’t offend her she redoes her cherry red in laughter.
She leaves the shop, Bell ringing her goodbye. I don’t know that her kisses will stop, No pennys for time to buy.
A lady died on the corner of the street, My mum told me when I got back. She laughed into her daises at her last beat, Daisies scattered along the tire track.
Policeman took off her coat, Felt in her pockets, Hundreds of dead flowers squashed in her tote, Saving them for the moon landing rockets.
I stand on the edge of my passing. I saw a murder you know, same time as I saw a woman give birth on the other side of the curb.
It was horrid looking baby, bright blue and lame, only good thing was it didn’t scream for the first few minutes, I’d been thankful of the silence. Miss Moore looked happy with her baby, and so I was glad. She was airy, wan young girl of a rich father, and she’d had it off with the married maintenance man in my building.
A bullet blew through my first-ground window. Single plane of glass and splintered wood, that one had been my favourite of all my windows. Though I can’t pity myself too much, for knowing of the red spilling grouted in the pavement. She’d be so upset, she’d never get that out her pores. Mr Locksley was an old man, the body splayed on the concrete slab was as bright blue as the baby. Gaudy in the face, black all over in a hood and still in his overalls from work. He was fixing the radiator inside and fell through the window along with the bullet. I saw who’d done it, I think I was the only one. Walls have eyes, myopic like an owl and I saw everything.
The police are coming now. They scraped him from the pavement and put his body bag in the same ambulance as mother and their baby. Because it was his baby, and right now, they looked much the same in blue hue and lameness. Miss Moore was crying with the babe latched to her breast, “He did it! My father, he’s killed my Joe! I’ll kill him!”
The green suit closed the back doors of the ambulance with her mudslinging only muffled inside by the siren. The ambulance pulled off and so did the policemen, they went to arrest Mr Moore, her father was on the loo in the family home while they’d done it, I heard gossip that evening under the streetlight of my building, that he was tucked into the copper’s backseat bare-arsed and a toilet roll square caught in his cuffs.
They’d all been wrong, you know. The walls tell me a much different story. That no man killed the maintenance man at all. See it couldn’t have been Miss Moore’s father, he was no where in sight of my building. I’d told the walls, I’d guessed the dead man’s wife as the smoking gun but the walls shook in indignation; the walls liked Mrs Locksley very much, she’d painted them pink.
I’d kept quite still after that, and silent while I waited for them to speak again. I wait all day. Then, as the moon lay a crescent shadow at the north of my red brick, and glowing the red blood stain on the pavement, a mocking body shape of the maintenance man gone-too-soon, the walls whispered to me, so low if barely caught it.
There had been a woman living on the top floor of my building for the past 10 years. A quiet sole who I’d seen sneak bread to the highest flying birds, she was lonely, I’d never seen a visitor nor seen her smile. But I’d heard music playing every third week of the month when she’d need her meter read in her apartment. The walls told me that Mr Locksley would read her gas meater alright, and he’d read it all night ‘til the morning.
On that Saturday morning, Ms Bird left her door unlocked as she descended the three flights down to the first floor, plucking the dyed-fur of her faux fox stole around her neck for mental perch. A gun tucked in the fox’s gaping mouth. She pulled it out only as she reached the radiator, Mr Locksley leaning over it with his tools.
She’d asked him sweetly to give her one last kiss then blew his brains out as soon as he turned to look, making sure to sun out the window, as not to upset the pink paint work.
Pockmarked walls dint pockmarked faces of our young. Nobody is talking. Nobody wants to.
They sit beside eachother for an hour, but don’t utter a word. Doesn’t the caged sing?
The girl with the full ponytail and jutted jaw wiped her hands over her laddered tights, quelling the sweat and swear words. The boy spreads his legs wider as he sinks further into the plastic chair and it creaks with the strain.
They liked eachother once. Till nattered mudslingings dipped a thumb into the skull of the soft growing brain of students. “Yes Miss” and “No Miss” don’t teach you how to speak up for yourself, so everybody stays quiet till they white their knuckles.
He’s looking at her. He reaches a intrepid finger up to her shoulder, he goes to tap it.
“Miss Greenwood.” The head teacher calls the girl into the office. She picks up her bag and the boy’s finger falls.
I think about the man I met on the street.
Toothless, he smiled still, through the popped collar of his trench and chapped lips stuck inside dry gums. He was nice to me at the bus stop, sat two abreast chilling on the dead plastic and inside the bell jar to wait for the number 10.
“I’m sorry,” He began his introduction with an gingerly apology, palms grouted in black grime as he later them before me in good faith, “You have the most beautiful teeth.”
He needn’t give a name, and his apology was meant not to startle. I smiled to him so he could see them better, straight and square, too big to see the pink of my gums behind full lips. He smiled back to show me his gums.
I smiled to show my teeth, he smiled back to show me that he wouldn’t hold it against me.
I am happy. I am, I am, I am. I am happy because. Don’t I look happy?
If you tell me I should be happy, Then I am. If you tell me not to be sad, I will never touch it.
I have seen what it has done to you. Does it hurt to touch? Flesh dried to husk and heart worm-eaten.
Still, it is mine. My heart is mine and so is my sad. I am happy because it is mine. Am I not?
Inside a held breathe, I wait till the next applaud. The thunder will come again, So, I will hold the air in lungs hung like dates till it comes.
I think He’s talking to me. In sounds so loud, It comes out of Him as a whisper. I hold my breath so I can hear him.
I wait for his round of applause, Clap of thunder and smile of lightning. He wants me to like it.
And so I’ll clap my hands, too. Again and again, I’ll clap louder.
Hold my breath ‘til he talks to me again.
I had only wanted to drink wine.
Red or white? Both displeased me. I suppose I liked the way how red would stain the glass as I swirled it around my chapped wrist. It would bloody my fingerprints and smear them down the neck and I would smile. I’d lost the tour guide before I could take a sip. Standing at the barrel of red white on tap, dripping like molasses into the dirt under my big-tongued boot. The arid dirt had soaked it up best it could, now the soil gurgled with the sour taste and frothed at the mouth, dirt mixing with wine as I dug the toe of my sole into the mess.
A man was here now. Just behind the second row of vines that went on for a mile, then stopped at the edge of the earth to be warmed by the setting sun. He’s just standing there, arms starchily at his side, hanging too long so that his wrists hung at his knees and his cap down too low to see his eyes. But I recognise him still, I remembered that the tour guide said that the owner of this place hasn’t a single tooth on the bottom, and he’s smiling at me.
I’d thought to wave but decided against it, he hadn’t waved either. Oh, he’s got his hand up to his mouth now, wiping his flaccid lip outside a toothless gaping with the back of his glove. Then he lifted his pinky up and tipped his fingers as if to say, Drink! He wants me to taste it but the red wine isn’t moving in the glass anymore. I stopped swirling it so it’s all just laying dead at the bottom. I don’t think I’d like the taste of it dead.
I can’t see him anymore. He’s probably gone to find the others, displeased that I wouldn’t taste his labor.
I’d thought to look for the tour guide too, and the rest of my group. Though, I’d rather stay here. The soil will be warm, the sun has bathed it for minutes as I’ve watched it, so I may lay here. I’ll just lay here awhile until they return.
I don’t suppose I’d know you were gone, If you had never been there in the first place. I’d place you as an emptiness in my heart, A swinging hammock with no one pushing it, Heartstrings not to be played by its minstrel. I don’t suppose I’d have a reason to sing, Nor know that my heart could ever beat faster than rest. It would only beat that way for you. But I suppose I’d never know that either, If you’d never have been there.
