Dusty picture books.

Untimely hours feel like a rickety pile of dusty books with crooked spines that are threatening to topple on top of me and crack the sutures of my cranium. 





Creaky spines

 There's a fire on the mountain. It looked like a child had spilled the murky water of their latest painting endeavour across the sky. The sun peered at me, sleepless and bloodshot from a day in the acrid smoke, then the western mountain's eyelids drooped for the somber slumber of night.



Boots


I chased after a couple of guinea fowl the other day. On the hill. The tar. For the hell of it. It made no sense and I wallowed in the lack of structure, of logic.




Sometimes

 We build towers out of cardboard boxes and see who can climb to the sharpest, highest pinnacle. Then we gloat over the crumpled remains when they fall from their lofty posts. They become flightless birds plummeting towards an end...amongst the downy plummage that proves, ultimately, to be futile. Where does wisdom go then? Empathy? Compassion?




Mr Cellophane

 My ears are permeated by melodies, but I hear nothing.

Content

Dusty picture books are stored in the loft of my mind. They are the eternity of summer afternoons journeying through Makebelieve. They contain the sleepless terror of shadowy nights. There are Oros spills and wax crayon scribbles sticking the pages together. They are pastel and gold. The pain of a bee sting and the warmth of an embrace. Lying on the roughness of a carpet lost in a sound. They are blurred. I wish that I could have kept my promise to myself of not losing myself to the adult world. That I regret. I've lost childhood. 

      



Child