Cress

From a dripping tap you soak blotting sheets and lay them in flat layers in a saucer. You scatter seeds. How can something grow from something so slight? He’s only half listening, because of the slide pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Scatter seeds. Some stick to the damp of your fingers and you brush them down your clothes; you’re a bee – that’s the pollen.

He’s loading the carousel. He has his back to you, but when he raises his hand above his head, chin upwards, holding slides to the light, you can see. Study. Orientate. You hear his face hum to the memory; his closed-lipped, moustache-mouthed hum. Strangely us, these mirror images. Under-exposed. Tutting and shaking his head. Over-exposed. Tutting and you think of him frowning to the dark of them. Hear him call. Put the saucer on the kitchen window-sill.

Polly, bring a sheet creased ironed from the warmth of the airing cupboard. How to hang it? That is the question. Same question every time. How to hold it against the wall? Stick it up with large tack lumps? It’ll never be perfect. A distortion. There’ll be kinks and bends. You see the sheet billow in the breeze from the early evening window. There are bluebottles fizzing effervescent on sills. Calliphora vomitoria. A bee trapped. Bushwhacked. Cobweb trails are caught on its velvet back and it’s fighting like a Zeppelin for air, frayed ropes ineffectual against the bulk of it.

Shut the curtains, Polly. That light round the edge is like blankets at the window early bed-time at the bungalow, whilst older children scraped bicycles against the glass of your sleep. Restless, you’re counting the repeat of patterns in wallpaper. Endless swirls. They lead nowhere but back to themselves. So why do you keep following them? Tell me. Don’t know. Can’t say. You see the patterns through the white sheet. Turn off the lamp. Turn the sofa new orientation; centre of the room. Front row seats. All your memories will be shown in a ripple as the audience stirs the canvas. Heaves out and pulls in; a tribal gathering, larger than your own unit. We are beginning.

The click. Slide in. Tiny apertures, just the size of a fingertip squared. Expand. They warp in the heat from the projector; teal jettons back-lit by the magic of real-time electric. It’s magic from the ether. Real magic; stirred by the light from the lens, fibres of the room snake and swirl like wall-paper patterns. Sit back. Can’t see. Sit back.

This shot is Grandpa tossing pancakes. One’s got stuck on the ceiling. Wait. Wait and watch it fall. Waiting. Will it stay there forever? No. Told you so. Thirty-three revolutions per minute. Sound of Music. Sunday morning; resonant base from the teak speakers and fluff on the needle spins deep in the grooves, gouging the sound of spit. Crackle. Stuck. Crackle. Stuck. Nudging the needle on with his fat fingers makes the sound of tent-rip nylon.

All that information in the tree-ring grooves, in the lines that run to the middle. How old are you anyway? Count the rings around you, from the middle out. Here hang geraniums in macramé plant holders that are knotted. Knitted, Nana. Complex patterns in the coarsest thread. Everyone will have knitted ties this Christmas and not just the menfolk. Coasters on oak surfaces won’t stop the rings from your Kia-Ora glasses.

These curtains in your living room are Maria von Trapp, with patterns that swirl back on themselves. Repeat. And the pipe between Grandpa’s lips is curling cream tobacco. Musty. Wafting, from the corner of his mouth. Daddy joins too. Puff. Puff. What’s the matter? You’ll die Daddy. You do that too, you’ll die. Five minutes closer each time. Stop it. Ridiculous.

That black leather chair: sit like Mastermind. Ask me questions. Go on. Ask me. Spin me on castors, cousin-same-age. Spin me faster, feel centrifugal force. Roll it across the parquet until they shout stop it. Make me sick, cousin-same-age. Vomitoria. There’s two: lets race across the parquet. Stop it. Stop it now. Load another to the slot. Momentary dark.

Light. Flooded. A picnic. A picnic by the Ford. Grandparents have brought a hamper of moulded plastic layers; orange, cream, orange, cream, which stack into a box. These layers are leaching: coleslaw, tomatoes, beetroot, cucumber, eggs with sunshine yolks; a palette disturbed with the inverted mirror curve of spoons and prongs of forks. Look at you, cousin-same-age. Beetroot stains around your mouth. You are palette-rich colour, disturbed by brushes. Look what happens to this spectrum the more you mix. Colour carefully like cousin-same-age. Can’t do it. Felt tips leak around the edges. Over the lines. Click. Black. All colours mix to black.

Momentary dark. Click. Light. Blazing. Blanched. Bleached out summer, so hot, melts the lens. Seventy-six melts tarmac. Hear the trickle on tyres. Splatter-spokes. Fry eggs on the patio. Could do if you wanted. Couldn’t. Could. Parched grass scuffs to dust-patches under swings, under see-saws. Strawberries; pull at their sockets, send runners down the length of our lawn. And Rufus: Mad-dog English in the sun, bites through your hand, Daddy. Sinks canines through your palm. See him swoon to the blood of it. Help. Help. He’s white as a sheet. Sit on a wooden stool, cool kitchen tiles on the soles of your feet. TCP. Salicylate your wound. Hold your arm up so teacher can see. Stop the blood push round.

Keep it up. Click-shutter. A School Fete playing field; run the length of it, past the lido with fenced panels and down the scorched-dust grass to the stream, trickle dry, where you catch tadpoles in a jar. Watch them all stages of evolution. You Green-cross-code man in itchy green tights and cardboard. Cross. Parade in circles. This is not who you wanted to be. You tell her. Not interested. Second place. All in a line age order; pose for photos. Click. Black. You swill negatives in developing fluid until seedlings appear in the moisture of the dish. Polly push light through a palette of images so they emerge like phantasm and watch them grow, like cress on blotting sheets.

Published in Lighthouse Literary Journal #7 ’The Life Issue’ 2015