The breaks whine as I jump off my bike, whispering Sorry, Duchess. Duchess is my bike’s name, so I ride on royalty. Raindrops roll down on her violet frame, making her glisten.
The air around our block of flats is cooling bathwater.
I look up to the third floor. Only one window glows. His.
***
At school, we’re learning about the possessive form:
The man’s room.
The man’s shadow.
The man’s tight-lipped smile.
***
When he first came over, he brought fast food. Burnt-oil smell flood the kitchen like lava. He watched Mum placing a fried chicken thigh on my plate, and called me his ball of sunshine.
As he said that his mouth shifted into a half smile, carving a small symbol into his flesh: an apostrophe.
I glared at Mum, expecting her to correct him, but her eyes turned into twinkling stars shooting straight into the depths of that sliced sign.
“I have a name,” I said, forking the bird limb on my favourite plate, the one with the squirrel family gazing out from an oak’s trunk.
Mum’s eyes flared at me for a second, then peeled back to him, sparkling.
***
The man’s food.
The man’s greasy charm.
The man’s new girlfriend.
***
Duchess turns away from the block and takes me to a patch of green behind the bus stop. Her wheels squelch on the soft soil. I prop her against an oak’s trunk, wide as Grandma’s embrace. I sit on my heels, listening to the rain tap-dance on nature’s roof. The trunk smells like hot cocoa and cinnamon. The way Mum used to make it for me before bed. I breathe it in and let my eyelids close, transporting me back.
***
The man’s temper.
The girl’s pulled hair.
The mother’s lost daughter.
Longlisted for Bath Flash Fiction Award and originally published in Dandelion Years : Bath Flash Fiction Volume Seven
Photo credit: rawpixel.com
Noémi Writes 