second-best room

Granny has a second-best room where all the second-best things live. The biscuits are left out long enough that their crunch is lost under the

tannined-tang of cut price tea.

The crockery doesn’t match, the porcelain is thick and ridgy and there are no serviettes to mop up the dribbles where lip clashes lip, just empty cardboard

kitchen roll innards lined up on spikes.

Granny has a second-best grandchild who hides in the second-best room.

Granny doesn’t know that the grandchild knows that Granny knows she’s second-best, but the grandchild

feels it, eats it, breathes it, lives it.

The grandchild has been

customising

in the absence of light and visits from the refined sorts whose mumblings dance down the corridor and trill at the door of the

second-best room.

The porcelain army is amassing. Little Bo-Peep no longer gives a fuck that she’s lost her sheep because the atomic bomb is ticking

TICK TICK TICK

under her cloak. Who made her second-best and wear the bonnet and hand over her earnings to the man in the suit?

(you did)

second-best room

The Lady of the Manor once danced into his arms. Who made her bow to his kiss, his patriarchal tie-you-to-the-sink-fetch-my-pipe-and-slippers

(you did)

now his head is no more and his insides are hollow and filled with the grandchild’s spit.

phlegm. gob. phooey. greenie. lugie. goz.

The grandchild knows that her legs don’t work, doesn’t need Granny to whisper that her legs don’t work, doesn’t need to be in the second-best room cos her legs don’t work.

The grandchild knows that the world don’t work, needs Granny to roar that the world don’t work, needs the second-best room to crumble cos the world don’t work.

The grandchild has been

customising

in the absence of thought and consideration and access and equality and light the porcelain army waits at attention at the door of the

second-best room.

The second-best room. The second-best room. The second-best room. The second-best room. The second-best room. The second-best room. The second-best room. The second-best room. The second-best room. The second-best room. The second-best room. The second-best room.

Live your whole life there.

TICK. TICK. TICK.

Gas masks ready.

TICK. TICK. TICK.