THE BIRDS AND THE BEES by James Harvey (1st place, Flash, Aug22)

Snow everywhere.  Smooth, crisp snow covers the garden like freshly laundered Egyptian cotton on a huge bed, and I watch from the window – this window where I have sat for so long now, watching, just watching – as the harsh wind whips up the soft surface flakes and whirls them around with blizzard-like ferocity.

It is the worst weather we’ve had for years, so the girl tells me.  The girl who comes, always, to tell me things, to look at me, to smooth my hair and feed me soup and tuck the blanket around my thin, frail legs.  She tells me her name, tells me my name.  She tells me when she’ll be back again, and what they’ll bring me for tea.

And how much she loves me.

I don’t remember.  Not anymore.  Not in this chair, by this window, under this blanket.  Dying, in this fog of oblivion, staring at this garden which isn’t mine.

Robins and great tits and blackbirds and chaffinches visit and re-visit.  In and out, in and out, like the girl.  They swoop in and dance around each other, circling and landing on the larch tree from which hangs feeders of seed and suet, chirping and pecking and vying for space to feed in this cold, harsh weather.

Tulips.  A bunch of tulips, in a vase on the table near me, and how beautiful they look, red and yellow and purple, and how fragrant they are.  Are they from my garden?  I remember, when I was a little girl – not all that long ago, was it?  Our garden was a wash of colour all year round.  Tulips, bluebells, daffodils – my favourite – hyacinths, the deep green of the trees and bushes and shrubs and the lushness of the huge lawn, which Papa kept so immaculate and was so proud of.

I remember something.  My first grass stain!  Behind that huge rhododendron in the corner of the garden, when I was sixteen.  He was such a handsome boy, with fair hair and piercing brown eyes and a ruddy complexion.  The son of the farmer who worked the land next to our house.  The boy kept bees, I remember.  We were sitting behind the bush, watching the bees collecting pollen and he was explaining how they were pollinating the flowers at the same time and he was so enthusiastic and seemed so knowledgeable yet so naïve and innocent at the same time and I just held his face in both my hands and kissed him, kissed those beautiful lips, and he kissed me back, and…

The fog lifts.  I smile.  The girl is still here – the girl who looks like me.

“Judy,” I say.

She smiles, touches my hand.  “Yes, Mum, it’s me.”

“Look.  The garden.  The birds.  Isn’t it lovely?”

She grips my hand.  Her eyes are wet.

“Yes, Mum.  Lovely.”

And then, just then, I am alive again.