Dear Sabrina – by Rebecca Baird
By Wasafiri Editor on May 17, 2021 in
After Sabrina Benaim
My house is falling down. It is falling down, but
slowly. Slowly falling down is called,
in surveyor’s terms,
‘subsidence.’ ‘subside’ means to ‘ease off’,
‘relent’, ‘become less
intense.’ It is odd that in English we have words that
mean to ‘become less’ of something
— oxymoron. My mother is
a hairdresser. She says she is adding
definition to my fringe but all I see
is more hair hitting the ground. Hitting
the ground is what dead things do. Dead things pile up
in old cages in the back garden as
my father shaves down wood
to fix the gate. Fix the gate because every year,
the gate scrapes the ground, because
my house is falling down. Slowly.
My house is falling down but for now
all the cracks are on the inside. On the inside, my
mother can cover them
with abstract art and photographs. Photographs make
my mother happy because
she likes looking at her family. Her family populate
all the photographs we have. We have none
of my father’s family
— oxymoron. My little brother is a dog. A ‘dog’ sometimes
means a misogynistic man but my little brother is
a German Shepherd although the kids
in the village think he is a wolf. A wolf would
howl at the moon, though, and we only ever get clouds or
sunshine here. ‘sunshine here’ is what the cat mews
as she rolls in patches
of light, leaves white spiny hairs on the red
stair carpet. ‘red stair carpet’ sounds like
it should be a book about Marylin Monroe, I think. I think
I lied before,
because there are cracks on the outside of the house
too, but we don’t talk about them.
We don’t talk about them but we notice
the flowers growing in them. The flowers growing
in them are pink and yellow and
make the house look like Miss Honey’s house
— the one from the book. The book
was the only book I kept in my grandparents’
house, which did not fall down but
which is not theirs anymore
on account of they are both dead. They are both dead and in
the ground, but their house is still there, although the book
is in my house now. My house now has a birds nest in the space
between the gutter and the rafter. The gutter and the rafter are join
-ed by a plank of wood and behind that plank is the extractor
fan from the kitchen and so the space is
always warm. The space is always warm but bird nests are not
always warm, and so
the space and the bird mother
over-incubated one of the eggs and
the chick pecked out
too soon. The chick pecked out too soon and
the bigger birds poked their heads in the nest and
stole it and dropped it and left it. My mother found it
laying below the nest, still half in its egg,
smashed on the ground. Hitting the ground is what
dead things do. Dead things are more horrifying when you almost
step on them with your bare feet,
says my mother. My mother tells me she put the chick
in the food waste bin. The food waste bin sits under the nest,
which is between the gutter and the rafter, and is probably
the reason that the bigger birds were there
anyway. The bigger birds are two doves which
sit on our garden wall in the summer and in a sad tree
in the winter, huddled together. Together,
you can see why they are symbols of peace, so enduring
and loyal to one another. Yesterday
it was a clammy, green day, and a third dove sat on the fence. The smaller of
my garden’s pair marched along to meet it, and clamped its jaws
over the stranger’s beak in some crazy kiss
— not oxymoron. It flung the new bird’s head
up and down, deranged polka dancing until
the music stopped – music I was not privy to –
and the smaller dove marched back
to her husband and the new bird
sat still. Still, I don’t know what it meant,
but I thought of the word ‘peacekeeper’ and
how the black rings around the dove’s necks all look like
little nooses.
Last night I lay in my teenage bed and grinned at
all of the teenage memories in the teenage bed and the house
creaked. The house creaked but not the same way that everyone else’s house
creaks. Everyone else’s house creaks because of plumbing
or old floorboards or
drunk-footed siblings sneaking in late
or parents having very very quiet sex — oxymoron. But my house
creaked because it is falling down. This morning I looked for the new
crack but I haven’t found it yet. I haven’t found it yet but my mother will –
she always does — and she will sigh
and clutch a mug of warm tea. A mug of warm tea that she
will roll across her forehead, ironing out the worried
creases. She will move her square jaw from side to
side and flick her pinkie nail on her teeth and think
about the crack in the house and how the house is falling
down and how the ground
is where dead things go. I will stand in the doorway and chatter so
that when she takes the mug off her head and opens
her eyes, she will have to look at me
and not the crack. Looking at me seems to help
her slow the cracks in her head. I am Polyfilla for this woman. This
woman who is also my mother, whose house – which is falling down – is home
to a menagerie. I imagine the sky falling,
a big ceramic plate slipped from my mother’s oven-gloved hand and
smashing the house like a bowl in the dishwasher. I imagine the birds
flying away, leaving behind their crushed eggs; the cat climbing
to the rubble roof and finding the sunniest spot, little-brother dog howling
at the moonless village sky and all the flowers
pressed between bricks like they are book pages and me, Polyfilla, too small
to keep this all together. Keep it together.
The ground is eating up this house, but I am told
it will stand ‘long enough.’ Long enough that every year
my father shaves the gate to stop it scraping on the path and my mother
cuts my hair and puts out bird feeders. This house is subsiding, but
she owns the ground.
–
Rebecca Baird is a Scottish poet and arts journalist based in Dundee. Her work has appeared in several small publications such as The Rally, Folklore Publishing’s 2020 Secret Chords anthology and The Voyage Out Publishing’s These Windows collection. Her self-published pieces can be found on her blog or on her Instagram.
‘Dear Sabrina –’ was shortlisted for the 2020 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Poetry.
The 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize closes 31 May. Enter here.
