Fulgurite and Belemnite

I wonder if the cactus still blooms in her window. Twice a year, someone would take a picture of it with a thermometer cameo. Is that mercury outside the north-facing window still tickled by a voile, or did they take that down too, to sell the house?

When I knelt on the dining chair covered in crocheted colours of whatever jumper was unsalvageable, that weird cucumber smell of the inside of my nose would reach me there, even though the CRT was a good half of me when I was about five years old. That TV had sat diagonally with the antenna forever rusting somewhere in the attic alongside my first communion telescope. I would often kneel there to look at the lightning storm hitting St. Anthony in the face at the top of the village church.

That antenna — God willing — caught three channels. More often than not, we got a broadcast from Belarus, but nan dropped the ‘ł’ to a melody of lullabies gone by in a land near Vilnius, so that meant she could do their Divine Mercy too. And she did, with a Paciorek moving in unity at the edges of Poland and a broadcast from another baroque church.

In the summer, the reception was never good, so I was left with my mind and a Kinder Surprise toy mixed into a donated Lego box that lived there. The summer brought heat in military time given the Wolf’s Lair.

Nan never spoke about the war. Aunty once asked about how she fed the powstańcy at the forest door, the same one we used to walk with the dogs, the path that the Russians took the train tracks from and left as a heap of pebbles.

The pebbles I lined up on the other side of the windowsill, where she kept the cactus. You see, I was looking for a lightning bolt — that peculiar glassy stone that my nan told me happened to a storm in a puddle.