Friday night should have been disco night, but my footballer boyfriend decided it was break up night instead.
Saturday morning Cockle picking with Joy. Head bent sifting those white shells from the mud, tears weren’t much use. It didn’t feel like long till that old paint bucket was full and heavy.
Back home to find my foster dad, Henry, in his usual fug of Golden Virginia, he-he-heing at something on the telly. Henry popped out then, brought us back paper wrapped fish and chips and a baker’s window-worth of cream buns, eclairs, oysters, iced buns, jam donuts, all consumed guilt free in front of Bruce’s Saturday night quiz show. We rinsed those Cockles a couple of times then left them over night in the lean-to, to spit.
Sunday morning the stink drove us out to church with suitably watery eyes. Then my foster parent’s daughter came round with their grandson to cadge a decent meal and draw her dad’s wheeze away from the telly. In the hall, confident that the telephone couldn’t convey the look on my face, I told the ex- boyfriend’s sister I was sorry to hear he’d stepped on a weaver fish. I would have liked to pee on his foot.
Bank holiday Monday and even Henry came down to the beach hut. By this time, I was more than content not to be stood at the side of a football field. Laying out in the sun instead, head resting on revision folders hopeful for some kind of osmosis. Those Cockles had slipped out of their shells, reduced to a bowl full and I had gone off the idea, its’s no way to live.
Based in Scotland, Ruth Gilchrist’s Poetry and Flash fiction is inspired by nature, travel and home. Her work is most recently found in Dreich, Under the Radar (fiction,31), Open Book Unbound, Southlight and Amethyst Review. Bird Brained, a bird count in poems is a hybrid of poems and flash fiction published by Black Agnes Press.
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