Mayflies

I stood as a child in the garden, watching the mayflies as they arrived time and time again, mid June and the sun settling warmth on pale winter skin.

Full of life and hope and bursting with sparks of colour among a world of dull overcast grey skies, a summer garden stood sprinkled with light, freed from months of solitude and darker tides.

An old house stood tall and sober, a shadow looming over a red gravel drive way, a child's magic highway. Grazed knees and arms broken from trees, a trampoline covered in bees.

These are the memories of a house I called home, a place I felt safe yet alone.

The grass grew tall here, buzzing with life, space and freedom to let my imagination run rife.

As the trees loomed tall and the leaves withered and started to fall, I could feel once again the burden of the old house's walls.

They beckoned nearer, wallpaper hung loose, among the cracks and crevices the spiders crept close. Days spent lonely and cold as winter's grip once again took hold, the colours they faded.

Greens turned to red, red then to brown and darker thoughts started to hound me, swirling deep water to drown me.

Sweaters and coats, socks and scarves to cover the chill, a time when you always felt ill.

I remember grey clouds overhead, rain hitting roof tiles as I lay in my bed. Gazing out frosty windows and longing for spring, when the colours of bright daffodils would bring hope for that summer garden,

lain dormant 'til winter did pardon.

The coming years would pass faster than the last, green grass growing and dying, birds hatching then flying, seasons came and went, a childhood lived and spent.

Through time winter had seemingly grown colder, a shadow looming over a garden no longer mine, a memory of more colourful times.

The old house it stood tall, though someone had now renovated it's halls. Bricks and mortar survived, perhaps some day new life will arrive.

A child will sit on the tall grassy verge, surrounded by warm summer colours, watching the mayflies emerge.