It wasn’t hurting anyone; now was it? She’d give the kids a difficult problem to solve, although if she was being honest, there wasn’t an answer to it. Then, when all their heads were down staring at the desk, she’d nip outside for a smoke on a delicious cigarette. She loved teaching – don’t get her wrong; it was her life. Yet it left no time for anything else. Most evenings she’d take her kids’ work back to the bedsit and drink gin while she ran red lines through the essays. One day she’d meet someone – that special someone – but until then five minutes with a cigarette behind the school was as good as it got.
----------
He’d bathe her, then feed her some cereal – the way she had done with him, a long time ago. She was his mother, after all – at least she had been, but she was gone somewhere else now – to an undiscovered country where he could not follow. He missed her and the chats, and the laughter and tears. What would you choose for a parent, if you had to choose; cancer or dementia? Jeez, what would you choose for yourself? He wasn’t meant to leave her, but he would, just for five minutes each morning. He would tuck her into her bed, then take a pillow from the side his father used to sleep on and go outside. And for those five minutes, he would put the pillow over his face and scream and scream until the tears were washing his cheeks. That’s all it was. A few minutes, each day, to keep himself sane.
----------
He loved her. They were getting married in a few weeks. She was everything that he wanted. Everything that he needed in this life. And yet, if it wasn’t for that one person across the street. The one he would say ‘hello’ to, from time-to-time. The one who made his stomach jump in circles – those things that never happened with his fiancée. Never. Yet, he could see a life stretching into the future with his girl, but what about the person across the street? Perhaps they were difficult to live with? Maybe it was all in his stupid, stupid head - but once a week – and yeah, he knew it was creepy, he would look out of the window at the house where that special person lived, and he would imagine that he lived there too. It was only for five minutes, as that was all it took before his fiancée would notice he was missing and call him back to look at wedding plans.
----------
Sometimes the shaking got so bad, that he would have to hold on to the side of the bed, just to stop himself from falling out. ‘Degenerative’ was the word of his life. The nurse was a kind soul, and she would take her lunch at 12.15 every day, without fail. She always left the matches beside his bed, and then she’d smile and wink before she left the room. It was she who brought him in the special cigarettes. Her brother liked a blow, and she’d get him to roll one extra. So, when she went to have something to eat, and through his shaking hands, he would light up the joint and for a few minutes, his troubles would float away in a cloud of smoke.
bobby stevenson 2019
