Emma by Jocelyn Brett

My first love was Emma.

She was 5, I was 4. 

 

I watched her from across the P2 classroom. 

I crushed the butterfly I was meant to be releasing because she laughed.

 

Michael B held her hand when we walked from building to building.

Every day I woke up and prayed he’d be sick. Off school, seriously ill.

Because I was next in the register.

If Michael went, I’d be next. I could hold her little hand in mine. 

 

I might finally be able to talk to her.

 

I came back after summer break, determined. We would finally speak. 

But I couldn’t see her anywhere. She was gone

Dragged away from me by her evil parents with new jobs in Nottingham.

 

I was inconsolable. I cried all the way home in the car. 

I refused to go to school the next day, and the next, and the next. 

My mother didn’t understand. 

She’d told me I’d never spoken to Emma. 

That I shouldn’t be so upset. 

But she didn’t know that Emma smelled like Parma violets. 

 

To cheer me up we went to the zoo that weekend. 

I was presented with a new toy. 

A tiger, with sleek stripes down her back and orange fur the same colour of Emma’s hair.

 

I named her Emma.

 

My love returned.

Emma came with me everywhere. 

My new best friend. We played together, bathed together, and even slept together.

Years went by and Emma joined me on every trip, every sleepover. Every night. 

After some years mine and Emma’s games grew different.

 

Emma had a very hard nose.

 

I loved Emma body and soul, and body again. 

Emma was forcibly removed from me in the summer of 2009 when I began missing family dinner to nap with her. 

I recently rescued Emma from my mother’s attic, and she is with me again.