Alice’s side room
was half hallway,
half lounge,
with no windows to the world.
Everything came from Auction houses.
Vintage Sewing machines and Nic Nacs
A regular Haberdashery.
Ancient Black and white photographs in dusty frames,
between Grandfather and cuckoo clocks,
not half as cuckoo as Alice herself.
“That’s your great Uncle Shultz next to the Plough,
our neighbours from Durry Hill playing croquet.
Dirty hand Jake,
your fathers, sisters
2nd cousin removed
next-door neighbour
What a rascal he was.”
“That’s a garden party with the Jones family.
We ate cucumber sandwiches,
guava jelly on scones,
sipped pure Ceylon from fine china.
Here’s a distant Relation,
what’s his face, memory deludes me?
He played Cello with the Wanganui Symphonic.”
In the town hall,
Before it burnt down.
Even the tar on streets was burning.
Only it wasn’t.
None of it was true.
The room full of forgotten photographs
came from dusty cartons
Relegated to be discarded
on their way to the tip,
until she picked them up.
She didn’t know any of them.
The truth left from those forgotten Portraits,
now to lost to unrecorded history.
The only stories left were the ones she told.
So we believed her.
Even though we knew deep down,
Like the clocks,
Tick- a - tocking.
Alice was way past cuckoo.
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