morphosis too

She found the perfect hiding place.

You listened.

A summer’s day warmth in the smell of rotting food from the bins and the circling seagulls cries. But there was something missing. The verandah doors wide open onto the warmth and cool of the wooden decking and a hop-and-skip into the back garden.

You tugged. And because the latch was jammed you’d left the back gate open.

Mind agog. Shachle and shambling you cried: ‘Peek-a-boo, where are you?’

Paths and painted and unpainted fences like park-dykes, pendicles, no bigger than the owner’s thumb prints of sun-burned grass and plastic grass and slabs. Private property.

A plucked and sticky kiss. Her sturdy wee legs in gushel as she broke cover at the back fence. Peerie-weerie with purpose she found her spot. To peer out. To cry out. But no give the game away.

Because she was a big girl. The pearl-shell of her settling. Mouth opening and closing. Agoggle. A giggle. A roaring calm.  

Nap of blonde curls and the red-belly of her T-shirt burst out. Caught in her own net. Caught. Caught. Caught.

Sidling up, ‘Peek-a-boo, where are you?’

You’d shoogled her and pressed her to your chest. But she was not for having it. She was off again before you were ready.

An ocean of indecision in which you were thinking of other things.  

‘Peek-a-boo, where are you?’

Hamesucken, hackit flesh fixed firmly, doon-lie.

When you find sleep, when you dream, she rises into a bannet-fire of endless sapless and sunny days.

‘Peek-a-boo, where are you?’ she screams and screams. ‘Mummy, where-are-you?'