The Gardens That I Crushed

I was so drunk that late afternoon I shouldn't have been driving at all. I'd had enough to blur everything ' judgment first. As I drove home through a quiet street of neat houses and trimmed gardens, something ugly rose up in me. Jealousy. Fury. The sense that everyone else had built something I didn't deserve to touch. One by one I mounted the pavements, tore through flowerbeds, smashed straight through letter boxes. Brick, stone, hedges ' all of it folded beneath my bonnet. My car was dented and ruined by the time I staggered out at home. Somehow, in that moment, the destruction felt like relief. I woke the next morning sick with dread and memory in equal measure.