Rose Lucas

Three Almost Squares, Rose Lucas; London, May 2020.

The house is made from many different things. 

Many things make up this house

Hot bricks

Stacked high into a clear blue sky

The building work always happened in the summer 

The low hum of the workshop at the end of the garden

That got longer each year 

Growing from the inside out 

So the neighbours didn’t notice

Someone was always making something 

Flakey paint drying in the afternoon

Curling off planks of wood like toes curling with laughter

A smear of cement across brick walls

Plaster drying into dusty shapes that shift each rolling hour

Scaffolding impossibly sturdy

Stacked high into the clouds 

Monkey bars to the moon

Gently creaking like an old ship

Wooden beams balanced on hot metal 

Pressing into the soles of tiny feet that clambered to the top

Up to the terracotta turrets baking in the afternoon

Baked terracotta pots 

Blue rope tied at the corners

With sailor’s knots

I never learned how to tie them properly

Something about a rabbit running around a tree

Down, up and round

The smell of sawdust 

And the treasure chests of old brass nails 

A lick of glossy paint like a cat’s tongue

Biscuits

Builder’s tea

A melted chocolate bar from the pocket of Pat the builder’s jacket

He always remembered a few hours too late and passed you a shiny parcel that you squished between your palms. 

The house started with just three rooms

Three-almost-squares-but-not-quite

Three places to rest a while

(and a small cupboard on the side which began as a place to store tins…And ended up housing things that people had forgotten they didn’t need. A place for these things, in-between-things in-between tins, to rest a while)

Brick by brick it grew. 

Outwards, not upwards. 

Like a full belly as opposed to a tall person. 

None of the family were particularly tall. 

But that was okay.

The house grew wider, like a grin, 

Not up like its children.

The kitchen floor had started off blue. 

The walls, if you remember rightly, were green.

They could barely see over the kitchen table as they shoveled hot cubes of fried potato into their mouths.

Three of the smallest ones

Shared one bedroom. 

Three beds pushed together. one big place to rest a while. 

These walls were painted yellow

A small fireplace and black and white tiles that you could just about see your reflection in if the light was right,

Slightly stretched like the back of a spoon.

To the left, a window out onto a narrow pathway between the pebble-dashed side of the bungalow and beyond,

A small strip of forest that belonged to us. Our view. 

A magnifying glass split into four squares 

One for each small face

And a spare, in case the insects wanted to look back 

A good swap, you thought.

You remember it well

The way it grew each summer

(Out not up but not just from the inside out. Also from the outside in)

Gaps in the mud ready to house a home

Concrete walls above and below

Curling through the soil like roots of a tree

The soft clink of metal across brick

You press your face against the cold brick wall that lines the side of the house

walk your fingers up to the line of pebble dash that creeps round the front edge

Climbing your index over pointing finger

until you find a loose stone 

You pick at it 

Kick at it gently with a fingernail

Until it softly comes away from its base

Leaving a smooth shell of white paint behind

Perfectly curved

Like a crater 

A bowl

A hat

A bowler hat

The hat of an acorn

A belly button

The curve of a palm 

Ready to catch water

A sink

A curled tongue

Stretched out to catch the rain

A makeshift paint pot

The breakfast bowl of a moon dog 

The imprint of a mint pressed into the side of your cheek

Hidden behind a molar 

(it lasted for longer if you didn’t crunch it)

The space your other molar left behind

A smartie placed carefully into the dough of a birthday cake

A shell from Shinglestreet  

A cave on the tip of the ocean, big enough for one

A place to curl up and rest a while

You sink your bare feet into the soil below

Curling your toes into the soft, slightly damp earth

It rained last night 

You can still smell the cool aftermath as it lingers in the air

Cooling your cheeks,

Your brow,

The top of your collar bone 

A soft breeze pitter-patters over your forehead

Like cats paws

Eyes closed and breath as long as the late evening shadows of the summer

You remember learning the word for this smell

‘Petrichor’ : ‘The word is constructed from Greek petra (πέτρα), meaning "stone", and īchōr (ἰχώρ), the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods’

The fluid that flows in the veins of the Gods

There is the faintest smell of woodsmoke from the fire the evening before 

You can’t tell if it’s coming from the embers at the end of the garden

or from the fibres of your jumper 

hanging loosely over your torso 

The soil is just soggy enough to hold its shape in between each toe

Forming mountainous ridges 

for the insects to climb in their sleep 

Inside the house

There aren’t many doors

Instead of a door between the kitchen and the corridor, there used to hang a heavy velvet curtain that just about caught the chatter of the evenings before it made its way too close to those that were sleeping. 

You would fall asleep to the comforting hum of your parent’s friends as they murmured together around the big blue kitchen table. 

Their shadows dancing in candlelight down the corridor.

Always taller than in real life. Elegantly elongated, their arms stretching from skirting board to ceiling at jaunty angles

Then disappearing in the gaps between doorframes

There was never a lock on the bathroom door. 

Sometimes family friends would stride down the hallway with such purpose that they would accidentally catch a family member, naked and curled up in amongst the bubbles. 

Probably quite embarrassing. But also just part of it. Part of the house. 

As the house grew out, you grew up. 

You moved out of one bedroom and watched as the foundations of new rooms were dug out, deep into the soil. 

You wished there was a lock on the bathroom door. 

The walls were stuffed with scratchy material and the sun beat down onto the backs of your necks. 

You felt scratchy too. 

The bricks piled up, the soil was moved once more

And again the concrete mixer seemed to come alive in front of your eyes, opening its hungry mouth once more to the skies above. 

You felt a strong desire to run your hand through the waterfall of grey. But you don’t. 

You are not ready to become a gargoyle

Yet

You moved into your new bedroom.

You painted yours dark red. 

A bad choice. 

You loved it at the time. 

You still don’t have a door. 

Nothing to slam (so if an argument needed punctuating you had no choice but to slam the big front door instead, and then spend a couple of hours wandering up and down on the stone path until you felt could knock again.)

You were let back in. 

You learned to climb the big apple tree at the end of the garden. 

Poking your head up above the thick canopy of leaves and looking out over the fields on the other side of the house. 

You tried again and again (and again) to taste the apples sweeter on your tongue. 

You didn’t know they were cooking apples.

A few fields down was a tiny house. 

You could just about see the roof from the top of the tree. 

You are grateful that your own house grew out and not up in this moment. 

Your friend Percy lived there. 

He played the saxophone and if you were unlucky enough to stay for dinner, it would often involve peanut butter and pasta. 

You often tried to get picked up before dinner was served. 

Next to their house was a huge bluebell wood and an old shed with hay bales inside. 

Every year you would crunch the stubs of wheat underneath the soles of your feet and roll the hay bales down the path to barricade the house from the road. 

Wedging your tiny hands into the tightly wound string (blue like the scaffolding), you would haul yourself up to the top and stay there until night fell, waiting for the first car to roll up through the dark, its headlights shining torches onto the outline of your fort. 

The hay was sharp if you stood on it at the wrong angle, but silky smooth to run your fingers along the right way. 

The imprint of the tractor wheels was big enough for you to fit a whole welly. 

Sometimes it got stuck. 

Percy’s Mum and Dad got married in this field. 

You were a bridesmaid and a man with a curly beard called Hamish dropped the wedding cake. 

Percy refused to wear his wedding outfit and instead went dressed as spiderman. 

They had a sofa out in the yard that soaked up the woodsmoke of the bonfire. 

Like your jumper did.

Hot grey tendrils curling up into the cool night sky. Stroking its cheek with plumed fingers. 

You remember it all. 

You climb back down the old wooden trunk,

Impossibly soft

Neither damp nor dry,

Your nail leaves a crescent moon imprinted on its cheek,

You take a cooking apple and press it into your palm, curling the stalk between finger and thumb until it comes away.

You notice the way that the leaves sound like ocean 

You come back to the pebbledash wall that has left freckles along the side of your cheek

And across your palm

You squeeze the soil in between your toes and blink up at the sky

You feel a cool breeze danced across your forehead

Your collarbone 

The back of your neck

The smell of fresh rain

Of woodsmoke on wool

A place that grew out and not up 

That you never grew out of when you grew up

A place to rest a while

Rose Lucas

rose-esmelucas@hotmail.co.uk.