Crescent Mooned
You weren’t on the platform when you said you would be.
Her nail marks still laid crescent-mooned in my skin. They had seen us through the misty glass, not misty enough.
My mother’s face, like she had just seen a car crash. I had no words to give her.
‘What about that lovely boy you brought home a few months ago?’
I didn’t have the heart to tell her is was all pretend.
She had slipped through the broken panels of our fence. I had told her not to come. I had told her I was playing good daughter. The tight strings of pretending were cut from my wrists for just a few moments. This kind of thing only happened in movies.
'Run away with me.'
Her eyes seeped grey. She held on to me so tight it hurt, as my mother pulled me away.
You weren’t on the platform when you said you would be, before they took my phone away.
Perhaps it was too much to ask of you. I stepped on the train with all I had in a bag hugged tight under my arm. I found a seat next to the window where I could see the platform, now empty. The yellow lines waited with me.
Two minutes left on the departure board. I couldn’t get off now.
You said you’d be here.
The doors beeped. I pressed the open button. They came halfway and hesitated. My blood burst quick through my body, my fingers danced in the anxious air. I kept pressing but eventually they closed.
I stepped away, then back towards the window. Her face appeared, dark in the distance behind the barriers. They weren’t opening. Slip through! I wanted to shout. The sight of you twisted my stomach and I was going. A dark figure burst onto the platform as we began to gain speed.
Alice Rose is an emerging writer from the UK. Shortlisted for The Bath Flash Fiction Award (Feb 2017), Rose has also been published at CafeAphra, Pendemic, and ReflexFiction. Rose writes from her small, St Albans flat, feeding other people’s cats and attempting to keep her plants alive. You can find her at alicerwrites.wordpress.com or on Twitter @a1ice_r0se
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