Bicycle Kettle

There is no weather like the bellwether, ball tether wetness of a grainy Sunday afternoon. No tea to warm the palms or coffee to ignite the soul. Just tick-tock-time beating in tune to the blind homunculus tapping inside my skull. She was gone. And with her, the kettle.

Her big red hair bouncing up, down, around. The ceilings burnished and dripping with her contempt. She was gone and so was the kettle. Out into the dawn rain with that big hair balanced atop a bicycle the colour of sunshine. She would return to that rock of scorned landscape and live like a wood fairy in the shack her daddy built.