Distant Guns

The garden sunlight plays tag with our fat ginger cat. Dad watches World War Two he grinds his teeth a general forced to take a back seat. Mother is in the kitchen not her natural territory. She opens cupboards exploring contents. It is a blue and white kitchen made of trees that died in 1974 along with linoleum dreams. She shakes a martini like a blind cardsharp. Her wrists are heron bones that click a gold-toothed charm chain. Flashes of recollection - they follow me up beige carpeted stairs. Small bathroom-toilet to the right where once I saw mum naked. Oedipus lives down the hall as a young teenager. From my window I see the long narrow garden with its back gate. Passion-flowers entwining pine boards. When the Nazi Storm Troopers come I will fire down at them, lobbing hissing grenades that land like angry cats onto their fleeing backs. A knock on my bedroom door. I can hear myself breathing heavily, a teenager desperately yells: 'Keep out!' Mum pauses to catch her breath. She is out of uniform, and speaking to a camera in my head.