Gap

You said "we could live here probably" I knew we couldn't but I went along with it.

Right here in these fucked up bushes.

I don't care.

I could stay home and re-arrange the ornaments. Half a syringe, soiled paper (some of it dissolving) empty containers; polystyrene & polyurethane,condoms, some other shit,leaves.

Keep house

I drink a lot of water from a tap marked 'not drinking water'

and we eat some white sugar from paper sachets.

"maybe we should eat the brown sugar?" you say, like this is the healthy option.

Your tooth is missing - at the top next to the canine. I put my index finger in the hole and press the soft give of your gum. Something flutters, here in my belly.

You go inside to use the bathroom and hand me some more of the stuff from your pockets - for safekeeping. My own pockets are so full now that it looks like I have this weird deformity.

When you drop your trousers everything falls out of your pocket, you wouldn't think to pick it up.

I know I'm not the most reliable guardian of anything, but out of the two of us I'm clearly the best bet.

I watch you walk across the grass and then part of the car-park your arms outstretched like for balance, like it's not turf or a plain of concrete but a very thin wire. You disappear for a moment. I guess you fell over the little shin-height wall there but you're back in view pretty quickly, your hair this radiant halo in the setting sun. You look so tiny and unreal.

blink once and you're gone.

In my hands the latest cache of your things - it's pretty much like the contents of our new home plus this piece of hash, about the size of my thumb.

We plan to sell it , very slowly, to the people who stop here - buy food and soap and whatever, with the proceeds. It's wrapped in silver foil, like a small, misshapen bar of chocolate. I unwrap one edge kind of tentatively and take a small bite - it tastes of earth and some musky perfume - not so bad. I pull off the rest of the foil and stuff the whole thing in my mouth. It's kind of hard to swallow as it sucks all the moisture from in there and sticks to my teeth in little crumbs. Like I said, a mouthful of perfumed soil.

I go back to the tap marked 'not drinking water' and drink some more. Rub at my teeth with my finger.

Sit down again by our new home and think about my scrap-book of mining disasters.I'm sad to have left it behind:

A boy of 11 years of age, named Henry Sharp, was scalded to death on Saturday last. He was an inmate of Reddrie Reformatory, but had got leave of absence to visit his mother. He was playing about No 3 Coalpit, Newlands, belonging to Messrs Dunn Brothers, when he accidentally fell into a pond of water, which was at almost boiling heat. The alarm was raised by his playmates, and he was promptly rescued, but he was so dreadfully scalded all over the body that he only lived a few minutes.(22 March 1875)

I don't understand - I think dreamily, why the pond was so hot...

Then this overwhelming need to press my face into the soil.

You drag me into our house I think.

Screw up my eyes real tight and spend that night guiding you through a car-park littered with treacherous, boiling ponds and hidden mine shafts. It's quite difficult, you keep falling over and your medication is pretty much worn off by now.

You're complaining because I'm gripping your arm so tight. Your bandages are unravelling again.

But it's better than being scalded to death.

Probably

It's ten hours or so before I can speak.

"We should go back"

You look a little regretfully at our hollowed out bush, but you nod and we trudge together over the bridge to the other side.