Six year old you is sitting across you, Look at her there:
Arms flung, eyes dug into the skies
Male voice in the headset: “It’s time you slowly walk towards her Be gentle, don’t rush though the dry leaves
Don’t be stern, like yourself
She won’t know how to be, remember?
Get closer to her,
Be a friendly adult stranger”.
She is staring at my face as if
I am a strange creature at the zoo,
I know that grin: it’s a sheepish expression of wonder.
How much I loved that grin, no one understood what happened behind. Should I try doing that again?
I also like this hand thing, I am doing
Hello, little one. How is the day?
She collects herself in the perfumed woollens, it’s her mother’s smell
that sits under the cookie jar on the kitchen mantlepiece.
I can hear the toffee wrapper crunching under her green frock,
She probably has ten more of those in her pocket.
I sit closer to her, she is more alarmed than, I am
Male voice in the headset: “Remember, five minutes... Do exactly as you wanted to”
I take myself into my arms and smell,
everything familiar
that chokes my throat with a punch of temperatures and voices and
Touch, of my favourite bed sheet that I would rub my feet over until I fell asleep.
She looks up at me and, is confused. She seems almost offended by my hug.
She sits back and hops on to her toes
and begins to run back into her house
Where it’s time for dinner.
Male voice in the headset: Well, you tried.
tangentwithtanner
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
annaxmalina
theartofmadeline