Gibbet Hill Farm

I want to ask myself how I got here, but the true and very short answer is: I really don’t know. I really don’t know how sober he was when he did it, but the true and very short answer is: he did. I lay carefully on a patch of grass and try not to make any sudden movements. The only valuable lesson I learned from him, other than how many beer cans will make you drunk, is that everything in life is always two-sided. You must remain prepared at all costs. You never know where you’ll be sleeping or if you’ll be sleeping at all. As I reminisce on this thought, my younger sister Flora lurks her way over to ask me something. I know through the fear in her blue eyes. Blue like the ocean. He always told us that you never know what will come out of someone's mouth. It could hurt you or it might just hurt the person talking. “Is that a cow or just an obese pigeon?” Flora questions. I was kind of hoping she would ask something more philosophical or logical to help us out of this situation we’re living in, but I'm not mad that this is what is on her mind. At least I can settle with the fact that someone remains the same. Silly Flora. He always said that if you can’t check the time. Guess. Guess how many leg hairs stick up when you think about the scariest thing in your life. For some reason, it feels like 12:02. It just feels like a number that sits right with me. While Flora studies the overly obese “pigeons” of Gibbet Hill Farm and I ponder to guess what time it is with the most advanced technology accessible one thing will always remain the same. Even if I'm not sure how, I’ll always be pulling one truthful and very short answer of how Flora and Cecilia Gibbet got here. Leonard Gibbet was how. That’s how we lost our home. 

Gibbet Hill Farm is where we grew up. I wish I could say I saw the green grass sway everyday, but there isn’t much to see. Big tall trees that droop and a sunrise that highlights the countryside of Groton. I had a dream that someday I would get out of this place and find my mother. Because when I lost her it felt like I lost so much more. My passion. My love. My life.  Nothing exciting ever happens here anymore. I go to school, pick up the daily supply of milk and ponder my thoughts. People in town talk about how those two little girls who live on the farm must be “depressed” or dead at this point. Regardless of their opinion, I learned that a young girl doesn’t have much freedom in this world. She doesn’t get to run around in a field of poppies or kick a soccer ball. Instead all they do is the dirty work and hang all of the laundry on the clothesline and look after the men in their lives like a mistress. People call him Mr. Gibbet, but nobody knows the real him like I do. The word “Mr.” grates on my tongue like a teardrop painfully gathering in the corner of my eye. It stings. A lesson I learned from myself is that some things in life aren’t always two-sided. Sometimes people are just plain cruel. This idea is the one thing that sits right with me. This is how I lost my home. A home that truly never felt like my own.