This post is the rough copy of he first part of a piece I wrote for an assessment on exploring depth and emotions inspired by a line or lines of poetry - In my case I chose to write from the point of veiw of somebody currently homeless.

1.

‘A woman figure without fault’ / ‘All night in the unmade park’

The day burns me.

The space around me sings with life. Light. Laughter.

A bee hums drunkenly around my throat and I watch it out of the corner of my eye, plump and satisfied with its lot in life.

Children in the park dance nimbly between birches, and I wonder at the grace of naivety. These strange humans who still see the world through eyes filled with wonder and the belief that good undoubtedly exists and triumphs.

My mind clouds with summer days past, like I’m watching a sick show made up of everything I no longer have. Safety, happiness, freedom. Splashing through puddles, grazing my knee. The knowledge I could always find safety in my mother’s arms, a home to always go back to.

A girl with her frizzy hair pulled tightly back into pigtails is collecting sticks around the tree I lean against. As she rounds its gnarled, aged trunk she halts at my feet and regards me with an expression so free of judgment it causes my throat to tighten with emotion.

‘Can I have that?’, she points and I hand her the stick she desires, a moss covered thing in the shape of a wishing bone.

‘You know, if you hold the two bits that look like handles and spin, it will point you in the direction of treasure.’ I tell her, watching her face fill with the magic of the prospect. She grins and starts spinning, but her mother catches her arm mid-turn and she halts violently.

‘Don’t talk to men like that honey, and put that stick down it’s filthy.’ Her brisk voice fills me with cold and hate. I listen to the girl innocently explain its magical properties and the chill seeps further into me as I hear the women dismiss her belief so casually, taking the stick as she waits for her daughter to enter the car then dropping it on the side of the road. My heart breaks for the loss of another puzzle piece of that girls’ childhood. The cruelty to which she is denied the chance to keep magic in her life. The stick snaps under the tyres, and just like that it becomes merely a combination of cells, and nothing more.


Skyla - 2015