We lived on the army estate but the only war we fought was us against the world: single mum and I, living in a two bed flat with blue and yellow walls - maybe orange kitchen tiles - my memory is childishly hazy, relying more on stories than tangible moments in which I remember the … Continue reading Fruit baskets & war
It was here we learnt the true nature of adults; of their inability to let children be. I still remember your face when you realised someone was spying through the hatch - I still remember your face and the way it paled blank and twisted as you were chastised for playing in … Continue reading Dolls in the attic
Six am the stench of alcohol under six years old your trench coat black and filthy beside me the drumming of your heartbeat, air caught in your nose I crawl sleepless from my bed and watch the birds outside, instead Photograph & poem: © Kristiana Reed 2019 https://soundcloud.com/user-798168065-197387209/when-the-partys-over
We sung hymns in assembly but we weren’t a Christian school. There was a church down the road but it was too modern, too sterile and even though I knew the girl whose father lead the services there, we never talked about faith or the afterlife; unless it was a lesson on Hinduism and we … Continue reading Churchgoing
Small and feral. Green knees and knotty hair, Nanny’s little devil; bumbling without a care along the concrete stones with mossy edges and busy ant homes. How she longed to be feather light, paper transparent and magical within and without. To blink and merge with vivid climbers scaling varnished heights. Her tissue paper skin grazed … Continue reading The Fairy Garden
After failing to heed my therapist’s advice not to open them all at once, I stopped. I cleared away the mess ‘Friendship’, ‘Love’ and ‘Work’ had made and left ‘Childhood’ on the table. It stayed like that for days; like a baby elephant in the room with all of the gold edges becoming unstuck. A … Continue reading Four Boxes: Childhood
It has been years since we met, decades since we last touched each other's lives with a smile. Time has been cruel, convincing me you were never there at all. A figment of a twelve year old imagination; lonely amongst the bookshelves and films, fixated on wheat fields and sunsets. You were beautiful … Continue reading Ghost Boy
I used to believe in abracadabra magic; white rabbits from hats, ribbons from shirt sleeves, coins from behind my ear, children’s party make believe; dragons and princesses, tall towers and treehouses, and the way the wind blows whispers when you are small and slight with dreams dripping on your brow and in the crooks of … Continue reading Whirligig
I don’t want to leave. I want to keep on walking, past every beach hut until the sun sets. Then find myself at the harbour chippy, queue for ten minutes before eating my chips, while I swing my legs sitting on a wooden anchor far too small for me. Ten more minutes and I’ll be … Continue reading Brightlingsea
The storybooks say you should have been the wind in my sails, not the drunken sailor weighing anchor in the middle of the ocean. Perhaps I should have believed in you more, blinked away tears to hold you in a blue gaze, bright eyed naivety and wonder - not cold heart mutiny. Except this mate … Continue reading Mutiny
