Scream #1: In the garden, next to the wisteria tree

She forgot to come home tonight. It wouldn't hurt, if it wasn’t his birthday. She’d always come home on his birthday before.

The notes of his scream are like moths into the night.

Contemplation #I: In the lounge room, beneath Grandpa’s painting of a dead sheep

Mum doesn’t listen. She never listens anymore. It’s like we used to have a secret language that only we knew, and she’d forgotten how to speak it. All she does is drink, drink, drink. Vicious ritual. Mum is a gazelle, and the alcohol is the lion, ravenous and destructive, ripping her apart, apart, apart. 

The wine stains on the carpet had never looked so much like blood. 

Scream #2: In the blue-tiled bathroom

Today he cut himself on a green glass shard. He should be used to them by now. They’re always littered around the house, like scarabs. 

He shouts, and his scream is like a thousand pearls falling from a broken necklace.

Contemplation #II: In a room that was once his father’s study and is now the start of every fight 

Maybe if he were here, things would be different. Maybe if he were here, she wouldn’t feel the need to erase herself, to drown in fizzy poison, to make herself feel nothing. Maybe if he were here, she would let herself feel everything. 

Cry #1: In bed, hugging his plush elephant toy; the first of many

Today she forgot his bedtime story, and called him Robert instead of Will. 

This time he cries, and his sobs are like raindrops dripping from a windowsill after a storm.