rorourke
he totalled up the day's casualties and injuries
less than yesterday, signs of a falling trend
more importantly, consistently less than the other side
at home, the women wept
that's enough of your racket! when will I get a moment's peace from you urchins. oooh this street's gone right downhill; it was never the same after that nice Mr Wilson passed. No respect, that's it. They've lost all respect for their elders. Not like in my day.
after months of acrimony, possibly years if you think of the time before the divorce, since the intangible moment when our marriage turned into dysfunction, we came to a settlement, lawyers drawn at the ready
don't sit on the radiator, you'll get piles!
how we imitated the universal grandmother, sniggering as only 13-year-old girls can
so immature
we could not be told a thing
later on, these grandmothers would become our allies
they'd seen enough to come to the same cynical conclusions as us with our wealth of teenage experience.
the eyes glazed over
several audible groans
a head drops onto the desk, heavily, not noisily
"not a soppy book, please"
anything but that
she kept us all going, pushing us ever, inexorably onwards
never running out of puff, but still, we were made to hear the gears creak, the pistons whine
at times we resented her
we would have been lost without her
we still are
what is the function
everyone has one, where's yours
welcome to the room where we keep the people without a function
behind this door is the functionless
i didn't realise that joining the tour made me eligible for incarceration
years afterwards, the sting of the cane forgotten, remain the shame and the image of laughing sneers
hot breath in the back of my neck
I can hear the laboured intake and exhalation of air
my skin crawls
I turn round, with reluctance
the best is a rediscovery, something that had been sitting comfortably in the part of your mind you'd left unilluminated, waiting patiently for you to stumble round and notice it
load more entries