Childhood Potions

Childhood Potions.

Glass jam jars now clean hold pounded petals. Crushed in water they swim and swirl a clouded mixture in clear spring Kentish gardens. As a fawn of Knole Park she stumbles dance further into woods to further seek flowers. Petals ripped as palms, torn by thorns, sweat and sting. But as children know, and young deer grow, different colours bring complex scents. Young Abigail’s back garden perfume founded in the blooms and shrubs over looked by father’s workshop. Far from a Stag. Forgotten mobiles and toys gather dust behind him as he stands at the battered wooden doorway watching his only daughter procure her childhood potions. He peers through the steam as he sips his tea. Young fumbling fawn Abigail clambers deliberately to the climbing flora on the sandstone workshop walls. Earlier rainfall keeps them wet as the pinks of flowers blush in growing midday heat. Sweetness and pollen endure, a sweet rush smell. He helps her up lending her a knee to stand on, a matter of fatherly support. Absent antlers, made up for in his timid gestures of a nurturing nature. Her father helps her down with one hand. Infant handfuls of petals, of all Abigail’s favourite colours, are dropped into the vessel placed on the mossy concrete slab. The glass bottom grates and dusts on the stone floor, as the yellows and reds and pinks and oranges of springtime float individually in the half full jar. Screw the lid back on – shake up the perfume – open, and inhale. Senses strongest memory; the smells of warm mock lemon escape from the top of the watery jam jar. Tattered battered rose petals lick Abigail’s nose, a beginning of ripening femininity. A floral illusion in memory, Abigail makes perfume in her garden.

Wow! I think this is my fave story so far!! I abso looove flowers spesh roses!! I think the ten30 boys have really got what I was talking about, making "potions" when I was a child, reading this brought back so many memories, times with my father at home. It made me really miss home and really miss my father's workshop, even now the smell of wood shavings, that "father" smell and of course my make shift perfume.