THE PEAR TREE

HOW MANY PEOPLE ever change. They do all the time, every second. “The whole world is a stupid beautiful stage” I wrote in my notebook under the pear tree in my grandmother’s backyard. Then I went walking around the side of the pool she’d just had installed. She was so proud of that pool but for some reason nobody ever included me in either side of the family; maybe that was my decision.

I circled the pool, slipped, and fell in. My uncle fished me out. I would have drowned and didn’t know how to swim but he grabbed me by the scruff of my hooded jacked and I can’t remember the rest.

Twenty-one years later my grandmother had leukaemia and was in hospital and I didn’t go and visit her because I was ashamed of what I had become. Nobody knew where I was. They might have cared but I didn’t know it. I had pimples all over me face and I didn’t want my grandmother to see me that way. She got a golden staff infection in the hospital because her immune system had had enough, and maybe she had too. The last thing she did was go to China. She divorced her husband and travelled the world, by herself.

Something hit me right between the eyes in school but I never complained. A child lobbed a rock in my general direction and I dove but instead of avoiding it I jumped into it. I had to go to hospital.

The next time I was in hospital was because I lit a fire and burned my arms and legs.

I liked being in hospital because they had clean sheets, real thick grade; quality. They gave you food and left you alone.

Anyways, it was never a pear tree I sitting under; I’ve never seen a pear tree, it was a mulberry tree. Once I ate one and it made me really sick and I ended up in bed again, in a basement wondering whatever it was I felt inside myself. I only wanted to know what I felt outside. I wanted to see the sun and the sea. I only wanted to see the light that shone behind my own eyes.

I’m writing this story to enter a competition and that awakes what I feel inside of me. I don’t want the money, I’ll never win it, but I feel better after writing things down so I just keep doing it. It started off as a journal twenty years ago and it awakes all the thing that are sleeping in my soul. I know that.

Sometimes when I sleep I wish I wouldn’t wake up. But I do. It doesn’t matter what you wish for. The only thing that matters is giving your own life a meaning; and you make it up in your head. I think that and it shrinks my head.

I have no fear. Whatever happens today will happen again for someone else tomorrow, I just hope they don’t regret it for the rest of their lives because I don’t give it much thought at all. In fact, I pride myself on not remembering things. And I’ll do that for the rest of my life.

If I ever do see a pear tree, I’ll climb it, like a dog. And I’ll be out of here. And I’ll stay there for the rest of my life. I won’t be lost or lonely. I’ll just look at those pears, green, and watch them turn to ripeness. My head won’t shrink looking at those pears. Maybe I’ve already done it.