My parents bought our house from Mr and Mrs Ford. I never knew them. I never even met them. Years later my mother told me Mrs Ford was dead, hanged in the garage of their fancy new place. She’d been heard crying, over and over, “Oh, why did I leave my little house?” I expected her to haunt us after that. She never did, though. She and her regrets blew away on the wind like she was nothing.
The night after I finally knew my marriage was over, I dreamed of a sideboard we had in that house, something the Fords left behind: a huge, squat, dark wood thing; its curved wooden handles were kind of deco and it was like the hungry mouth of a cave, big enough to climb into and hide when the world got too loud, too bright.
I hadn’t thought about it for years, but in my dream the sideboard was no longer a refuge. It was a an animal, a predator, stalking me through the rooms of the house I’d left behind. It edged forward on its squat legs that sank into the carpet as it transferred its weight, its doors bowing slightly with the effort of its wooden breathing.
I knew it wanted to consume me, fold me inside and dissolve me slowly in its russet interior where my parents had kept the vinegar and ketchup and pickles.
I woke alone, surrounded by silence, with the taste of brown sauce in my mouth.
I’ve made a lot of bad choices since I grew up and left home. Wrong jobs, wrong friends, wrong lovers. I’ve existed in their shadow, always looking for shelter, somewhere to hide. I’ve been afraid to strike out on my own. And now I’m left alone in this flat, dreaming of something a dead woman left behind. Did I carry my fear out of that house like a genie in a bottle? After I left, and my parents got old and moved away to die, did it stay with me, firmly stoppered but ready to escape in the shape of an art deco sideboard, lurking, ravenous, and ready to spring?
***
Clare O’Brien has been a schoolteacher, a journalist, a politician’s PR and a rock star’s PA. She was 2025 Poet In Residence at the National Trust For Scotland’s Inverewe Garden in Wester Ross. Her first poetry chapbook, ‘Who Am I Supposed To Be Driving?’ was published in 2022 with Hedgehog Poetry Press and her novelette ‘AIRLOC’ in 2024 with ELJ Editions. Her latest chapbook ‘Breathing Out Becomes White And Snowfall’ came out in Autumn 2025 with Intergraphia Books.