Pinning Up

Meddling.

Fag ends prettily invite you inside; the rented rooms await your intrusion.

Scores of filthy nappies festering in the cavernous, gaping  stairwell betray the child’s existence; it does not have a life.

The battleground of the hall is a minefield that only the experienced and the wise should cross.

Scattered, spent syringes, blood-stained needles, all offering hepatitis C, HIV and a hell you cannot imagine.

Sickly air, scented with the delicate perfume of urine, blow and vomit,swiftly settles on your M &S jacket like a vampire bat, sucking all hope away.

Professional dangerousness: which way do you choose?

A tentative knock on the kicked-in door.(Please don’t be at home.)

Another, a bit louder.(She must be out.)

Louder still.(She could be dead.)

Hammering on the kicked-in door............faltering steps shuffling slowly, the baby cries.

She opens the door of her crazy cave, hugging her child like a talisman against the invasion of the Nosey Parker. Jaundiced, jaded, sunken cheeks, suspicious eyes and mind reject assistance. She’s doing all right, see, can’t you tell? She sniffs. And sniffs.

Pale, fat baby, clinging like a limpet to emaciated mother.

Stuffed full of rusks, milk and Wotsits, maternal love failing to care for this mite.

 Keeps him quiet. Frozen awareness. He sees it all from his cold, cot prison.

Shove a Milky Bar at him, he won’t notice the men, the lads, the cads, the guys who shout and hit and smile, all the while providing the dosh, the cash, the means

to an end.

Needing the fix to maintain the norm, she isn’t a bad person.

Sniffs. Sniffs again. Sweating and shivering, aching all over, hoping you don’t see the agony of it all.

You are from Planet Posh, where life is magical all the time and hell is nothing more than internet failure. You don’t understand where she is coming from or going to, or that she really doesn’t care at all. For herself.

But for him, she would gladly die.

Time to go pinning up.