GOOD FRIDAY

 

 

Listen...

 

...the child was eight when she saw them a rare sight around here let me tell you a happy couple in the tea shop you’re joking I said yeah but wearing fake wedding rings she said didn’t fool her though she said she knew they weren’t married at least not to each other said they were talking too much talking mammy nonstop talking married people don’t talk like that mammy parents never talk like that and what’s more you should know that mammy

 

her eyes rolled around and dismissed me with a grimace are ya listening that was twelve years ago and her brother a year older you know he’s less vocal but I wonder if the two of them blame me for staying and maybe you do too and do you think I was a fool for putting up shutting up and staying put for them rearing them him rearing up on me in front of them

 

and for what a broken body a broken mind a life sacrificed to keep half-fixed the broken home keep it outwardly unbroken for them for them to be able to say they had a mother and a father real ones not a partner a lover or significant other like their friends’ parents who broke up split the children up and down the middle between them making two broken homes out of one oh no that would never have happened here I tell you that for certain no way

 

but isn’t it gas how the quiet house drove me demented and when they were small all I wanted was the quiet the quiet hour after bedtimes after cleaning up times and getting next day things ready times sitting down in the peace and quiet times and now I have to hear noise in every room and I vacuum the entire house every morning just for the sound of it

 

and at night he watches television in the kitchen before falling asleep on the couch and I have my own space and he will not set foot in it never did used to be called the sitting room but I made sure there was sitting room for just one in it and I remember when I saw the dimensions back when we used to talk then and I asked him to make the builder cut it in half because I knew I wanted a small room a woman’s room where a man would feel out of place too big and too dirty for the daintiness

 

are ya listening don’t even ask me what he does all day I don’t care it’s nice to eat when I feel like it no more roast beef mashed vegetables gravy and roast potatoes like his mother used to make fuck that he goes to Centra at feeding time and eats out of polystyrene and someone said he eats it in the jeep with plastic knives and forks and so what 

 

tomorrow’s Thursday my gin day I drink wine Monday Tuesday and Wednesday because they’re my off-the-drink days  wine doesn’t count as drink you see but how I love Thursday and Thursday used to be Friday in terms of the gin but I moved it back a day since Christmas after the two went back to college

 

and have I mentioned the Lithium powerful stuff a mighty man as the fella says and they gave me a month’s supply but they didn’t know that was overkill if you’ll pardon the pun but I’m planning on it it’s gold dust to me that stuff going for gold as they say going to pop a palm full of the little darlings on Good Friday when he’s above praying on his knees at the Passion of our Lord and do ya think will my escape from this misery put a damper on the news of that other lad and all the talk there will be from the altar about how they knew he had escaped from the grave because the stone was rolled back hello are you there?