” Creep “

Published 2019

Remember the Ivy that ran along the top of the garden wall?

Remember how I asked you to cut it back and you said, ” It’s only a little bit of Ivy, what harm could it do?”

Remember how  we watched the spidery vines  gently lay  itself against the stones day by day?

Remember how the Ivy crushed everything it touched?

We never heard the stones being turned to rubble, shouldn’t we have heard something?

The Ivy slithered  over the top of the garden wall, it covered the trees in the garden, it snapped their trunks and broke their limbs and entombed them it their waxy, pungent leaves.

 

Remember how the Ivy climbed up the wall next to the kitchen and through my bedroom window?

The ivy laid it’s vines against my neck and around my limbs and then it crushed my bones and turned my body to rubble.

That’s what happened, I think,  because  it couldn’t have been you. Your hands could never have treated me with  such cruelty, even though your words often did.

 

It must have been the Ivy that crept along the top of our garden wall.

The Ivy that  you refused to cut back

that killed me in my sleep.

 

Republished for Fandango’s Flashback Friday