”Leaving” - what I wrote for my English paper 2 mock exam
Sunlight filters through the stained windows, projecting onto the hardwood floors. Her fingers twitch as she clenches her fist, staring out at the backyard. One last time. Her eyes trail down to the frayed armchair, the sun having faded it to a dull green after gazing upon it for so many years. Her feet drag along the floor as she makes her way to the kitchen, still stocked full of spices. The floor is cold, as she is soon to be. The feeling creeps up her leg and she shivers, her eyebrows furrowed as she glances towards the bedroom. Memories of her children, no older than four, flood her mind. She lifts her heavy feet a few more steps, and then sinks down onto the carpet pulling a photo album into her lap. For a while she sits there, gazing fondly at the weathered album, old in its years and yet not as old as her. She flips through the pages, pausing to dwell on each experience that comes to mind with every picture. Her wise eyes blink back a few tears as she traces her children's photographs. They have long since left her abode.
She pushes herself off the floor, an action that's proved to be harder each year. She slides onto the edge of her bed, perching on it like a weary dove. Her mind drifts to her garden. Rows of anemones, chrysanthemums and daisies, not to mention her tomato plants. Would they survive the winter without her gentle hands to guide them? She’s had the garden almost as long as her family has had the house. Her late mother’s vivisteria twists its way into her mind. Its fragile stature and leaves would be helpless without someone to take care of it. She didn’t have the same reassurance her mother had; a daughter to care for it…
She can only hope that nature treats it as one would treat their child. Her children. Did her eldest son really know how to take care of himself? Like her flowers, would they wither away without their mothers reassurance?
She shakes these thoughts out of her head. God will provide.
“God has provided…” her mind trails off as she glances around the old cottage that’s been passed down through generations, and will soon go to whichever child accepts it. She shifts her weight, lying down on the bed which once supported her mom and dad, and the ones before them. Her gray hair curls around her wrinkled face, swirling on her pillow like clouds after a storm, and she exhales, her usually tense body relaxing fully. Images of the past spin in her head, a bit too blurry for one to discern.
She says, to no one in particular. Nobody's been in this house, save her, for a long, long time. Her eyelids grow heavy. Her trembly hands placing themselves at her sides as she closes her eyes..
