Disco.

Disco.

The rain caresses my ears cruelly. I feel fear. The thunder clashes and screeches and roars. It is unrelenting and it shall never tire. The thunder is enraged at something greater than me, and I cannot control the fury. The sky is pulsing like an aggravated vein on a swollen neck: it is a disco for the raindrops. I have not felt so in awe of the world before. I watched Jurassic Park too recently and I know that tonight may be an apocalypse too. Dinosaurs may emerge from the vortex beyond and into the holiday house. The windows are weak and token against the force of a reptilian claw. The lightning ebbs and flows and hesitantly reveals a scaly surface nestled amongst the trees. It is present and then absent. The dinosaurs are stirring. 

The Burning Bush.

The flame tree was in full bloom when Glynis dropped her home that day. It was deadly.

(God was watching).

Moses and his staff were futile today. The burning bush was irrepressible and it shook red seeds and embers of despair onto the pavement.

The syringa tree hovered in an umbrella arch. The boughs draped down onto the rusted jungle-gym. The tree was an alien here. When the wind blew, it shook its heavy branches and the syringa berries fell. Her sister once ate a cocktail of dirt and grass and millipedes and syringa berry. Her innocence saved her from the poison.

She was an anxious child. She was too fearful. Her imagination would craft death and destruction with a wry touch. She would peer like an elderly damaged soul through the lace and through the curtains. The flame tree leered.

Where was the Corolla the familiar hum of the engine the ascent of the roof-racks the squeak-squeak of the opening gate the footsteps?

Her stomach curdled and chopped.

I don’t believe in dragons.

My grandmother had blue eyes. Her hair was an eternal brown, stained dark with dye and care. She had kind crinkles in the right places. Wrinkles were beginning to form, but were shooed by rigorous application of a collection of creams. She lived next door to Joan, who once gave me a Mickey Mouse bowl and spoon collection. Little was remembered about Joan, but she was smaller and more wrinkled than my grandmother, and had hair the colour of soft moonlight.

My grandmother was a collector but not a hoarder. She had a white picket fence and God was her neighbour.

Her snapdragons snarled in their rectangular cages. Their mouths snapped and sneezed without intent. They were trapped by the dark soil: forced but futile sentries. They laughed silently at danger but cowered when it came too close. The snapdragons were beautiful and flawed and were stained red and crimson.