remember having lunch out on the porch when it was summertime and so hot
you
could barely breathe in the stuffy rooms of our childhood home.
Mother would be waiting at home to make lunch, remember?
Sometimes she even managed to greet us with a smile, posing prettily by the marble fireplace in the basement.
I think I hated school even then: a holding pen for the maladjusted and the unlearnables.
At least our school was.
Mr. Marston used to throw his baton at our heads when he was angry, remember that??
What an asshole.
I learned a lot from him.
I was always so sure that it would be ME
that got out, I would be the one who made it far and
wide and only looked back
with a crooked grin,
what a sick joke to be the one left to
tend this pitiful hearth.
Yes I used to stand by my chair for hours!
Uncle Rog never let us sit before him.
I made the best whiskey and soda, he said!
I liked sitting on his lap by the fire.
I wonder if Aunt M. ever sat on Uncle Rog? Everyone said she loved herself best.
She "never had a chance", I never knew what that meant.
In life? In love?
And the legends surrounding that bear skin rug! Outrageous weren't they?
I had to give that thing a wide berth when I went nightly to the wood shed, let me tell you!
Did you ever look into it's eyes?
Some days Auntie M. never left the davenport at all.
Just sat and stared. In her prettiest dresses.
Listening
to the sound of the ivy attaching itself to the chimney.
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