Friends

Westminster chimes ting out. The battery must be as tired as the paintwork surrounding the supposedly stained glass of the front door. My coat catches on slightly webby brickwork as I lean against the wall, waiting for my friend to answer the door. Did I hear footsteps? Or maybe not. Perhaps she has left already. Maybe, she has forgotten that we'd arranged to meet this morning. I can see a shadow moving, only it's retreating, getting further away from me. Why won't she answer the door? There's a slam round the back and quick steps then wheels and pedals and chains whirr and all I can see is her bag as it swings round the corner and she makes good her escape.

Oh my god that hurts. I can feel my shoulders sagging, and I start to cry. A creak reveals her father at the door. He looks confused, but I can suddenly see things very clearly indeed. I'm not wanted anymore.

I pick up my bicycle. There's no point trying to catch her. Apart from the fact that my bike used to belong to my mother, has no gears and sports a big fat wide plastic paddle for a seat and a shopping basket on the front, while hers is a racer with fancy handles and five gears; a boys' bike with a bar that you need to negotiate with a kind of swaggering kick before you can sit on the tiny little leather perch; and ignoring the fact that I'm thin and weedy and not built for powerful bursts of stamina such as it would take to gain some ground, what would I say? "Why don't you like me? Who will be my friend now? Please like me!" No. Instead I drag my two wheels out from under the neatly trimmed hedge, and cycle slowly to school, a warm summer wind getting into my eyes so that I blame that for the tears making their melancholy way down my nose and cheeks. I'm not crying over her. I'm not. I'm not.

More air in the world

As I sit here, taking up space, it occurs to me that when a person dies, when they're gone and buried or cremated, the air molecules must rush in to fill the void. Does that make the air thinner? Or does the fact that there's one less person breathing in, and out, somehow thicken our soupy atmosphere? Or, like so many things, does it all balance and out and actually, when someone dies, it makes no difference at all? I wonder.

Dreams

I kissed my boy last night. He made my lips tingle, and his arms were protecting me from pain, cold, fear, hurt. I wish I hadn't had that dream. It has woken a memory, re-stabbed a wound. Broken my heart all over again. I hurt in places that I've kept secret from myself for so long that I'd almost managed to forget. And now I remember again. I know now that my arm will go round his waist and my hand come to rest against his hipbone, and that as we lean into the wind together his arm goes round my back and his hand will settle on my shoulder. I can even smell the wool of his coat and see the shine in his eye that tells me he feels the same. Oh tantalising dream you kill me with your hints and suggestions and today I'm supposed to carry on and buy socks and clean toilets and be mum.