moss

Barbara was a lollipop lady. She carried a lollipop. She wore a high vis jacket. She stood on stripes. She walked from one side to the other. She had a very confident left hand. She was a lady. She was a lollipop lady. It gave her an enormous sense of wellbeing.

The village she lived in was overgrown. Mossy. It was full of nooks and crannies. It was full of slithering things. The fish swam around it. Darting in and out. The daddy long legs crunched like giants across the rooftops. There had been a school. It was hard to see it now. Under the silt. There had been a man. A lovely one. It was hard to taste him now. In the murk. There had been others around. But they all left. Left their ghosts behind. Place holders. Twists of light. Promising return. But lifetimes are passing in minutes now. Whole lifetimes shutter as she blinks each eye. People have built empires, broken cups, and cried at the lichen accumulating in their mouths. People have learned lessons, eaten cheese sandwiches, and fought with a bloody nail for someone precious to be able to see the night. So she knew they weren’t coming back. No matter what the wasps said.

Barbara takes the ghosts’ hands. Walks them across and back again. She longs to know where they are all going. What are they up to? She longs to follow them home and prowl around their drawers and haversacks. See what’s what. Just once she’d like one of them to not let go when she steps up the curb. But hold on. Lead her home. Steam open their ribs and show her their secrets and teach her how to tie a shoelace. Have a Horlicks together. Lie naked and ask each other questions about skin, and yesterday, and the peacocks on the Isle of Skye.

The ghosts don’t though. They just pass. Barbara isn’t even sure if they know that she lives in the road. That there isn’t anywhere else but right here. She wonders if they wonder where she goes at night. If they think she tucks herself up in the old ovens at the bakery, eating from the tins that they left behind. Do they worry she will run out of food? Do they worry she has forgotten what language she speaks? Do they worry that she needs a hug? Or some new buttons? Perhaps. No matter.

Barbara stands in the road. She waits near the stripes. No matter, she thinks, no matter. She pushes out her confident left hand. Like a lollipop lady should. Watches the dust dazzle on her luminous yellow jacket. And waits for a hand to hold.