◉ 002 | Little Rose and the Marbles

There was always coffee.
Thick, bitter, black as oil.
And there was always Little Rose—
loud as a Sunday market,
her voice crashing over the table like a wave.

She spoke with her hands,
a cigarette in one,
punctuating every sentence
with a flick of ash,
a sip of coffee,
another story tumbling out
before the last had landed.

Mum sat across from her, listening,
nodding, laughing.
Not speaking much.
Nobody really got a word in with Little Rose.

Her flat was small—
under the roof of an old building,
ceilings slanted low,
like the whole place leaned in to listen.

Cigarette smoke curled in the morning light
from a single roof window.
Pigeons scratched above.
The city hummed below.

I had nothing to do.

Then I saw them.

A bag of marbles, tucked behind the TV.
Not just ordinary ones—
they glowed in the dim light,
colours swirling like tiny planets caught in a net.

One stood out.
White, streaked with red, blue and yellow—
as if Mondrian had painted it himself.

I turned it in my hand.
Then, without thinking,
slipped it into my pocket.

And then another.
A green one, like an emerald.
A golden one, like Jupiter.
A fiery red one, like Mars.

One by one, I collected them.
My pockets slowly filling
with tiny, stolen worlds.

Mum looked at me.
Just a glance.

I paused.

She looked away.

So I kept going.

By the time we left,
my pockets were full.
A secret treasure, heavy against my leg.

I imagined them in my room,
lined up in rows,
mine now.

Mum was quiet.
More quiet than usual.

Then we got home.
And she unleashed hell.

"I saw what you did."
I stopped breathing.

"I tried to warn you, but you didn’t get it."

She paced.
Her voice sharp,
her words landing like stones.

"You stole.
In front of me.
In her house."

Then quieter, colder:

"What do you think she’ll say about me now?
That I raise a thief?"

Her voice cracked—
not from sadness,
but from something worse.

Shame.

She took a breath.

Then, softer:

"What kind of person do you want to be?"

I had no answer.

The next morning,
she returned to Little Rose’s for coffee.
Alone.

A little strange,
two days in a row—
but in her eyes,
necessary.

She told me later—
she waited until Little Rose went to the toilet,
then, with shaking hands,
slipped the marbles
back into the bag behind the TV.

"She didn’t notice," Mum said.
Then, firmer:
"But you did it. The first and last time."

She took another breath.
The rage had passed.
But something else remained.

"We don’t take from others.
And what’s ours?
We give—if we choose to.
That’s who we are."

That night,
I lay in bed,
my sister’s bunk above me,
the marbles no longer there—
but still pressing into me.

Some lessons don’t fade.
They just shift—
from weight in a pocket
to weight in the soul.

And that’s when it hits:
Who am I when no one is watching?