What a differrence a day makes

The blue and white police tape lies abandoned like confetti on the road. I am in a thousand places in my head. The flowers lie on the grass. Their colour drained. The message cards faded. The writing disappeared. The words long forgotten. I pick around the rubbish of other people’s lives trying to give myself substance. I am a thief.

He hammers on the ceiling. I shout back. You little shit. The woman without a voice can make noise. You don’t like that. You think you have me pegged. I slam the cupboard doors. Reach for the glass a hundred times and scrape it over the work surface. You will never have me pegged. I will wear you down. I wear everybody down. I know how. They wore every last breath out of me. I can sit on the cold floor for hours. Sitting it out. Waiting until you leave. I can be as loud as you. As furious as you. I smile as you bang out with those angry little feet. I turn my TV down and look out the window. Run. Run. Run. With your shopping bag full of socks and beer. I need an empty place. An empty road upon which to play. Nobody gets to place a foot there. No one gets past me.

I have plans you see. I have seen a thousand things. I have stored them up and collected them. Like people collect pictures of babies and weddings. These are the scraps out of which I build my story. I will scatter them like confetti on my empty road. They will be left there forever. They won’t fade like the flowers and the cards. No one will forget the rubbish that I leave.

I am full to the brim with my stories as I step out. But as the quiet bites my ears they fall from me like stuffing. I see myself. I am an empty toy rolling in the road. Unloved. Forgotten. Faded. What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was nice.

I had twenty-one pounds and eighty-two pence in my wallet. Two tens. One pound. Fifty pence. Twenty. Ten and two. They wrote it down on the carbon copy paper in black ball-point pen. Just rubbish. I knew. But it wasn’t the measure of me.