The Apple-Tree Throne

by Premee Mohamed

balls scamper across the thick grass like mice.

Victoria is resplendent in blue cotton, a practical gown sewn with strawberries and forget-me-nots, her thick dark-brown hair pinned into a bun, streaked with a deep bronze just the colour of her skin.

I am being haunted, it is a battle not of wits or grit but simply a war of attrition, both of us struggling to exist in the same space which we believe we deserve, no different from Gundisalvus’ Land, I cannot shake the idea that I either should have died then or cannot justify living now, I stole holy water this morning, do you hear me, I am a thief of more things than I ever thought I could steal in life, I remember the dust, the smell of the dust, I wake screaming with it in my nose, my leg hurts constantly, it collapses at strange moments, and there is nothing within me, I am the hollow shell of soldier, man, friend, lover, and I cannot tell whether I have gone mad or not, and no one else can tell me either.

His great army was only of account when it had something to gain; it was a greedy and unsatiated darkness.

fried fish from the shop in the tram terminal, paying the extra few pence for middles as I never did in my youth.

I am allowed to stay from sundown till sunrise, a cut-price Dracula nursing a few pints of porter rather than blood,

I am invisible here, pleasantly so;

perhaps they will go around now telling everyone I simply went mad tonight, and I will be properly shunned. How dare they go around inviting Dracula for dinner, and feeding him ice-cream, and giving him pomade.

You’re my friend because you’re a good man, Ben. And because keeping company with you makes me want to be a good man myself.

Even the clothes that flap from the wash-lines lack colour - grey, white, pink, blue, as if they were once much brighter but have lost their hues over time to the relentless drain of the quiet streets.

I asked him yesterday “Why do we always give nicknames that are longer than their true names?” and he said, “Drink your tea, you great radish.”

I wonder about marriage, about being chosen for someone, someone being chosen for me; and waking up every morning and being chosen again and again and again, till the day we died.

This work is based on ‘The Ghost of Genova Heights,’ by Stars, from their album ‘In Our Bedroom After the War.’