Rubric
It sleeps in the crook of my arm, head nestled into my chest. It's been three days now but we're surviving. 
 
I peel small strips of bark from the trees and it sucks the green tinged sap from the wood. Drops of water shed from the tips of leaves, I open its mouth to catch them.
 
It cries sometimes. I think its the wind, brawling in the trees above us. I cup its ears and after a while it stops. Looks up at me. Smiles. 
 
Under shelter, I tell it stories. They fall from my mouth, inviolate and beautiful. These days seem to pass like years of dreaming and forgetting. 
 
It's funny. Back home. My name scrawled across newspapers. Official files, rubrics, questions, answers, stories - my name. Pages and pages of my name. 
 
Those same pages. Born here. Made from this very wood.

Moving
When we moved Kieran's bed, we found a carpet of dust as thick as a fat man's finger, exactly the same shape and size as the bedframe. Dead skin, shed hairs, three red paperclips. "Have we got time to hoover?" I asked. I got a stare: "All the years we've lived here, NOW you want to do some housework?!"
 
We had to step around Kieran on the stairs. I lightly bumped the top of his head with one of my boxes, “Ooh this is heavy!” No offer of help.
 
He wouldn't talk to either of us as we drove off, just stared out the back passenger window. We followed the moving van, listening to Ken Bruce doing 'Pop Master'. Occasionally, we'd hear the odd right answer mumbled from behind us.
 
We hoped the new place would bring happier times. My dad hadn't been the same since his accident at work.