My Midnight Garden

We don't mention his name in our house. A spectre of our diseased childhood he stalks our collective dream. He drank, and taught me to roll a spliff. Night-times, I'd creep downstairs, peeking through the bars, the banister would shine moonlit spiriting me to the ground. He drank, and mum wouldn't let me sleep alone. How I hated that bed, smothering, suffocating me in blue bedsheet - a cloud motif, nitrogen-choked. That night he punched through the back window - you took him back, I seethed the child's way; I counted offences; one bottle for one eye - I would claim them someday. That night, I planned a secret war. And then I slept.