ThIRD BOY (DICKY)'...he’ll never forget as he paddles blind home
through the weeping end of the world.' —Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood Each night, on the darkened stage behind my moon-burnt eyelids I re-live it: standing wet on the cobbles in my patched-up pants as the shrill girls giggle and gaggle around me, asking for kisses or pennies to buy treats from Cockle Street sweet-shop. And I, refusing. And always refusing. Because my mother said I mustn’t kiss girls: they torment and torture young boys like me – but really because Tad couldn’t keep his grubby fingers from the jars of the wild hovel women who live upon the hills. And so, ’neath the wood, I refused to smack lips with the village bike (as she became known) and ran wee wee wee all the way home like a porking pig squealing for his mother’s pink teat. And you ask how it makes me feel? It makes me feel as bitter as citrus skin, as abandoned as bagged cats, but as awakened as I will ever be, understanding that the almighty omniscient could have written a different part for poor Dicky, but didn’t. |
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Published in That Lone Ship (2018)
Available to buy from Parthian Books
Video recorded for The Crunch Issue 0 (October, 2015)
Available to buy from Parthian Books
Video recorded for The Crunch Issue 0 (October, 2015)