Forgotten Times

The boy is looking where he cannot be found. He is looking for what cannot be remembered, searching for nothing. He sits in a bed and remembers making men from pipe cleaners in the dresser, stealing chocolate and raisin pieces from a brown gold tin, taking the postcard of the naked woman from the shelf when his grandfather was too old to see anymore. I am speaking of death in this house, and unspoken relatives who I never knew, sit here, unspeaking, as we get to know less and less of each other by the second. I miss him, my grandfather, even though we never got on. All the flowers have gone from the garden, the bushes, the pond, the tree. His study has been knocked through, I never knew what he did there, but there were maps, and boards with pins in, and cold, metal things that smelt of grease and must. The only thing that remains is the smell, it’s still so here, it lingers, like it’s waiting for its owner to return, it is one more ghost that haunts this house, and strangers come and strangers go and none ever realise what that scent is all about, about what gave birth to that fragrance. I am speaking of death in this house.