Sugar (2)

There are two fish tanks in that hut in the ecology park. One big one for all the stuff that’s supposed to be there – like a showcase of what you can’t see in the ponds because it’s all murky – and a smaller one. The small one’s called the rogues’ gallery. That’s what the woman said. Serious. It’s for all the stuff that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Stuff people throw in, or flush down the toilet cos they’re bored. Goldfish. Crabs. Turtles.

I don’t see why they can’t just live in the ponds with all the rest of the things, to be honest. Live and let live. Accommodate. Negotiate. Tolerate. Apparently it’s to do with natural balance. Food chains. Predators. You’ve got to feel sorry for them though, stuck in that tank, watching all the kids troop in and out. I held my face right up close to the glass last time I was there. I bet they think we’re ugly. I bet they watch us and think how weird we are, walking about on two stick legs, making all that noise.

We had a goldfish once. We bought it in a pet shop full of much more exciting things than goldfish. I wanted the puppy in the last cage. It had feet too big for its legs, ears too big for its head. Mum said we couldn’t have a dog like that in a place small as ours. It wouldn’t have minded a bit, I know that, but I’m not the one who gets to make the decisions in our family. That time, my brother was small enough to still be cute. He wanted a hamster, till he poked his finger through the wire and got himself bit. So it was a goldfish. We called it Sean; I can’t remember why. I remember when it died though. We made a boat out of one of those big match boxes, stuck a stick in for a mast and a triangle of a dishcloth for a sail. Whether I cried or not’s got nothing to do with you.

Beach

There’s a sign saying the footpath’s closed, but no-one to police it. It’s an empty part of the city; a lorry now and again, the driver perched high in his metal castle, his eye line way above your head, whistling.

The tide is neither here nor there. There’s no barrier, but I suspect they wish you wouldn’t walk amongst the treasures. Here at the top it’s all plastic colours. Bags hold onto their contents. Blue pot pourri – dyed husks that have forgotten their smell. A red strap that used to hold things together. Further in, the colours grey. Cracked glass. Feather soft ash. And down here by the shore, rusted up shapes, like tempura vegetables. A nail, a hook, the loop from a long rotted tarpaulin.

I prefer here to the tarmacked path, dissected in two, punctuated by red signs in anticipation of emergencies. Here, moss clings slick green to concrete corners. Cobble stones bridge the shore. Here, the water is closer. It’s just a step across to the stacks of windows on the far shore. But standing there, I wouldn’t feel the crunch and give of cracked ceramic and rusted metal and rock underneath my feet. Standing there, for too long, I would be asked to leave.

An image to go with Aoife's poem...

Cockle shells (outside the ecology park)

Beach Combing

The river is its own curator
judging art by weight alone.
Five sets of dentures carefully deposited
together to mock the random strangers
who once examined their toothless grins
in mysterious mirrors.

The man at the centre of a storm of coat hangers.
Other debris floating to the surface,
fossils a million years old, a bent kitchen knife,
a glass stopper from a bottle of acid,
plungers, spools, part of a ship’s pulley.
The language of industry.

The history of a small animal
digging its burrow
now forever trapped in solid rock.
The point of turning,
filling the space with sediment,
an absence made present.

The burial records
of an unknown vagrant who died
over three hundred years ago.
A stranger passing through
whose destination came out of parish funds.
Harsh beauty, how the land itself
marks layers of change. Every one of us
who tried to read our names in the water.

Reality sliced thinly,
the pieces that are missing.
The pirates who swung for three tides
knew what it was
to swim through time’s laughter.
A boat heading out to sea, a hidden warning,
a moment uncaptured.

First Workshop Wednesday 1st October

Please join us for the first of four free creative writing workshops on Wednesday 1st October. We'll be in cottage number 82, next to the Pilot Pub, 6.30pm start (finishing at 8.00pm).

Sugar

The name’s Sugar. And I don’t appreciate the jokes, so don’t bother. Someone like you living in a place like this – all that water. I’m not the dissolving type, that’s all I’ll say.

You’ll have seen the place I live, just off the shore. It’s a boat, except it’s not going anywhere. They don’t like us being here; figure they think the place spoils the view, but the fact is we own this bit of land, this rectangle on the bottom of the river where the sliced metal of the hull sits. We own it ‘in perpetuity’. It’s a word I like the sound of.

Wherever you stand you can hear the water. It’s like the river’s breathing. Sometimes I’ll sit, especially when it’s dark and you can see the buildings on the other side like a tapestry of lights, and I listen for words in the water. Wish. Kiss. Miss.

What do I love about the place, you ask. Why am I here, you ask. Because of the water. Because my eyes can stretch further than a wall or the block of a body in front of me. You’ve met people who live by the sea. Haven’t you noticed there’s a stillness at the centre of them? It is something to do with the distance. It is something to do with the sky.