Adventure

She said it would be an adventure. We packed our bags and headed out for the train station. The tiny wheels grinding against the sticky morning pavement. We had it all planned. Our big departure. We would go to a hotel. We would be sisters. Alice and Emily Rose. That way nobody would know. We debated over whether or not to take bags. We wouldn't really need anything except that one important container. And the vodka we would buy from the Tesco Express on the corner. She said it would look weird if we checked in without bags. That maybe we'd get turned away at the door. I doubted anybody would really notice us. Nobody tended to. But I agreed it would be a good idea to have some clean clothes. That was the ritual anyway. Shower. Wash our hair in flavoured shampoo because we knew it would lay unbrushed on a pillow for three days straight. Spit and sleep dust rolling onto our fringes. We had always done it at home before. Gone out in the morning. We are doing fine. We shop. We drink coffee. We look at the cake we bought. Smug that we resisted plunging our forks into the frosting. Not like those fat ladies on the table opposite. With their children. Their talk of parties. School things. So loud. We do not want to hear. Home on the bus. Letting our hands fall on our laps. Fingers brushing. It was exciting. To know. To want to do it so badly.

The front door slammed behind us with a resolute thud. We hoped it waked the neighbours up. The neighbours who had infected our lives for three years with their ugly hollering voices. Their nosey fingers bending the corners of our post. Trying to work us out. All they knew was that now and then we would disappear. But we had always come back. In the past.

On the train we looked into each others eyes. Running over the schedule. Smiling every now and again. Half way along the line we drank some water and I rested my head against the window. She laid her head against my shoulder. We would do this. I could now she was here. Not like twenty years ago when I rode the same train. Up and down. Away from here. Back again. Always trying to find somewhere to belong.

We laid our little bags on the strange hotel bed. Washed and changed our clothes. I didn't like the harsh feel of the sheets against my cheek. For a moment I wanted to go back. I saw one rigid body in a £25 hotel room. I tried to speak. To make it stop. But she whispered silently in my ear 'now you belong' and her invisible lips kissed my closing eyes.

Shame

I look in the mirror. It is not my face looking back at me. These cheeks. Traced with lines I don't remember placing there. These eyes. Wide. Placeless. Older than I imagined but still five years old. Swirling around a playground. Running so fast no one guessed you had no friends to return to. The dirty clothes. The shoes made for boys. Except you were a little girl. They made you cut your hair. When they didn't cut it you held your head over the sink and did it yourself. Cut so much hair off all that was left for the scissors to nip was my finger tips. Now it is long. It hangs there. I don't know quite what to do with it. It gets stuck sometimes. In the little pockets of skin around my temples. The sticky, healing flesh. I have to push it away with my thick fingers. Sweaty. Nervous. If I push it away they might glimpse what's behind the curtains. Don't look. Keep running. Still no friends to come home to. What do people think? They look. They create the story. But it is not me. I use a pocket torch to cast a light up under my chin. I can't stand in front of the mirror with the main light on. I like how the individual beams of light create a different set of shadows. A different me. One for outside. One for in. In some lights I am defiant. This is my face. Look at it. Look at it. See what you have done. Then my hand drops. The light spills. I can't face my own eyes. Look at you. Look at what you have done. I slide my thumb over the torch switch. Unable yet to face my shame.

Junk

I crave it like breath. I sit in his office. Screaming. Don't take it away. It is my life. I will die without it. As I scream for it I know it also kills me. Stops me dead. In everybody's eyes it is my problem. If I stopped needing it, the junk, I would be different. Renewed. Alive again. But the shiny little disc is not the problem. Taking it away will not make me different. There will be something else to replace it with. Maybe then it gives me life? Something worth screaming for. What would I fight for otherwise? There is nothing worth more to me than that little half moon of compounds. As evil as that sounds. I don't swallow it all anyway. That makes me smile. You all think I am screaming for it. But I am only screaming for the possession of it. You have taken the rest away. My need to scream becomes justified. You have turned me into nothing more than a problem that needs to be fixed. Everybody will be much happier if you just stop this junk. This rubbish. This shit. Your life. You have to fix you. You have to fix everybody. So heavy that weight in my hand. Far lighter is the little pill.

A Bump in the Night

She awoke with a bump in the night. The bed hard under her hands. It took her a while to catch her breath. Looked around the half-dark room. The curtains made little waves in the draft. The outline of her clothes on the chair. Shoes by the door. She breathed in slowly. Remembered the day. How she got here. Being stopped outside the fish and chip shop. 'You have to come with us.' She knew they would be there. Waiting outside the house. Lights on the car. Radios on their chests. She wasn't an idiot. It had happened before. It would happen again. She heard noises in the corridor. Heavy feet. No hiding in the confusion of her thoughts. She hated being in this place. The doors that could always be opened by one of them. That swang outwards only. The everyday things subverted. She didn't want to leave the bed. Eventhough it was hard and squeaked everytime she moved. She wanted to linger in the night. The protection of the dark. She wanted to be removed from herself. From this moment. She wanted to go back.

First Kiss

His lips were rough. Tinged with old food and vomit. She hated them rubbing up and down her skin. She flinched hoping it would stop. As if he would pay attention to what her body tried to say for her. But his head tucked down into the folds of her soft belly. He worked away with determination. He would enjoy this. When her young skin was brushed with red lines - little blood brush marks from his beard, he lifted himself up and looked at her like a painter admiring his work. Leaving his mark. He would stop. Just before. Just before she felt nineteen. Stuck in a Glasgow council flat with this stranger she'd driven half the country with. Half excited. Half dead.