New Year

There is no food in the shop. The lights are out. The windows steamy with breath. People fighting to get in. People fighting to get out. It’s hard to know which side of the glass is the best place to be on.

Do I want to spend my last few days fighting to eat coleslaw and Cheerios or should I just pace out the bottles of wine under the bed.

The thought of what to choose makes my head buckle.

As the sun disappears and the cold settles on my shoulders the only thought I have is to get in. As if being trapped in there with the steam from a stranger’s lungs is company enough. A hand to hold. A cry to share.

I drink. And I drink some more. I am not sure what I have to do. The man in the brown coat who I pass every day says he’s happy. His fingers are black. His gloves full of holes. He stops by the railing where I stand. I am so confused. He says he would like to hold my hand but I tell him I don’t like to be touched. He leans in anyway and I smell the cheap cider on his breath. His eyes are nowhere. Not in this crumbling town. Not anywhere.

Maybe not trying absolves you of the fear. Maybe it does make you happy.

I throw up at 2am. A volcano of red and stale bread.

I clean up with my eyes closed. Trying to evade this night. This new year. This moment in the story book.

I use up most of the water in the bath to wash the toilet. It is quite satisfying turning my world back to white even though I can't see it.

I walk back to my bed and can’t help but notice the creases you left behind on the sofa. The weight of you still with me; but not enough to fill the abandoned boots in the hallway.

This apocalypse has driven a wedge between us.

To get you back I have to get up tomorrow and try.

Manifesto

This is my manifesto.

Whenever I think of jumping
I will remember the smile on my face as we played on the swings.
The photos we took. My gloves. Your big furry boots. The sound of your steps like a slush-puppie machine.

This is my manifesto.

Whenever I think of slipping
I will remember you pulling my hand and making me skip. How it felt to move forward.

This is my manifesto.

Whenever I worship the railings
I will look up instead of down.
I will see a way over the bridge and think of how far we have come.

This is my manifesto.

Whenever I think the answer is to stop time
I will say to myself there is no time to spare.
Every second counts.

This is my manifesto.

I will eat those beans and not save them for the apocalypse.

This is my manifesto.

There will be a move inside.
There will be a chance to say ‘fuck’ and ‘fuck’ and ‘fuck’.
There will be films to watch.
Hair to blow dry.
Pets to be petted.
Journey’s to be made.
Skips to be skipped.
Late nights and sleepy mornings.

A little less pain.

This is my manifesto.

I am glad we have each other.
I am glad there are many more days.

What is mine

I object.

I object that nothing belongs to me.

Not the ridges and craters. The pink and the white. The full swoop of my time being lost.

I don’t think I will ever be able to utter the words.

To say
This is mine.
The one thing left I had to claim. The heat and singe. The prickles and bites.
That was. That is. Me.

I rush and fight. Spew out venom. Lies. All lies. The truth comes out when I lose my tongue. When I vacate the grey matter and fall into pure white. Slippery. Dangerous. Like ice.

Maybe I say what I say to educate you. Or liberate me. Whatever. It is forgotten. Neatly discharged. Sent home. Sent back. Never moved forward. Never remembered. Never honoured. Never believed.

I don’t know where I begin. Where my body is allowed to touch the world. Where every line is as trusted as the next line in a story you have read a hundred times. My story.

It is too much to try. Sometimes. Sometimes when all I want is every minute that is. That was. Mine.

I switch off the lights. Check out. Swallow. Breathe.
Roll over into the silence.
Silence that belongs to me.

December

Twelve days.

Twelve days left.
Such relief.

Twelve things lost.
Twelve things never found.

Soon I will fall back into you.

Twelve beautiful little shining pearls.
Twelve multiplied by a hundred of them.

Twelve cars passing overhead.
A lorry with the words on the side
‘Eat More Chips’

I never will.
A few potatoes are not enough.
Not hot. Not cold. Not sliced. Diced or rolled.

There will not be twelve people to line the room.

Nobody that counts.

You pass me in a white coat. A black coat.

None of this feels real. A slip on the floor. A bang on the head. A little gas and air.

It is twelve days ago.
Twelve years ago.

Never and when.
December.

Chemical Reaction

I dabble with chemicals. Mix them up in my ceramic pot and watch the reaction. With no words left to utter I lean silently over my creation and let the vapours burn inside my nose. The acid bites and soothes. I drift off. The sound of the pot moving in the sink breaks my silent prayer. Harsher than what is inside. It underlines the emptiness. The devotion to this ridiculous alchemy. My head nods and blood trickles out. My eyes dilate. I understand what I am losing. What I have lost. I am the poison and the anti-dote. I am clinging to this fucking pot as if it is the Holy Grail. I would understand it more if I was helpless. But all of this is a choice. An experiment. I took up this thankless quest and tell myself that I can’t stop until I find what I need.

My pulse picks up and I let the mixture run cold. A tear falls from my face and gets lost in the clump of dying crystals. I wash it all away. Place my hand on the plastic pipe and feel it groan under the demands I place upon it. No pipe can wash away this much feeling. In time it will crumble and leak. It will leave a stain and I will move house.

I close the door and take a walk. The air vacuums up the residual vapours. I remember school. What I learnt; ‘every action has a positive and negative reaction.’ I smile a little.

I go to the coffee shop. They look me in the eye and acknowledge me. That is worth the price of coffee every day. The woman in the smart coat. Gold rings. Neat hair. Takes the sugar from my table without asking. I follow her eyes. They give me nothing. I put on my duffle. Walk to her table. ‘Excuse me. It is polite to ask someone before you take something from them.’ It astounds me as much as it does her. I shake a little as I leave. I have a sugar pot full of words. And I can use them.

There’s not much behind that wizard’s curtain that can scare me. I do not need to fill my pot to find my courage. I just need to remember all the good things it has taught me.

Limits

I go to the railings for my morning embrace. The three metal bars hug my knees and chest as I lean over them. There are no cars in the car park today. Just pot holes and frozen puddles. I look at the lady trying to negotiate the ice and melting snow in her hooker shoes. I look at my own feet. Same size and shoes as an eleven year old boy. Stuck, stuck, stuck. I kind of wish I had the courage to step out in red, plastic stilettos. Maybe it would invite more flexible hugs.

It was another restless night. Awake in my bed at 2am. I heard voices in the car park. Something about finding a lone female. Voice in a walkie-talkie. There are lots of hiding places for heads that need rest in this complex. I wondered if they were looking for me. If anyone is looking for me. In my head I have already disappeared and there is no one left to find me. In total waking, I know my body will never get past the railings. They stop me. Hold me. Turn me away.

I am so scared of Monday. It is coming like a freight train and I don’t want it. I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want anyone cutting into my existence. I am happy in my darkness. I am happy drawing the curtains and lying on the floor treading time. It is a place of non-being. It keeps me safely tucked up within my limits.

I hurry home with food I shouldn’t eat. With books I will never read and paper I will never fill with pictures. I like to keep my arm close to the wall. My feet aligned to the inside of the kerb. Like doing a puzzle from A to B. The path of least resistance. I try and look at the things that make other people smile but my face contorts into a rictus and I feel even more exposed. How do words come so easily to them. Movement so effortless. Every muscle and thought grinds inside me and rubs me raw.

I pass the shoe shop. In the window the red shoes sparkle under the artificial lights.

'Curiouser and Curiouser'

I measure myself against you. Lie on the floor and occupy the little gaps in your flesh. It is hard to judge where I end and how much of you belongs to me. The warmth of your blood gives me safety. It is funny how we can lie like this yet never speak. You only allow me a moment of comfort. I am not sure if I could tolerate more. Maybe you know this. Or maybe you like to stand up and walk away. I would not be surprised if one day you failed to come. I leave a space for your shoes by the door. I have something ready to fill it should you disappear. A bag or a box. I steal bags from the shops. If you carry a bag as if you own it and it is full of your life – even just the phone numbers of friends - nobody looks twice as you walk through the ringing doors. The trick to being utterly invisible is to appear utterly visible. I would be as exposed as a broken bone if somebody looked in one of my bags. Open me up and there is nothing there. Just the blackness and emptiness of nightfall. Sometimes I wonder if you are even real. Or if I am just imagining how your body feels. How any body feels. I can’t imagine why you would want to lie there. What do I give you? No words. No kisses. No warmth. Maybe I make you feel real and you wonder if I exist. Maybe right now you are writing. ‘I measure myself against you. Lie on the floor and occupy the little gaps in your flesh.’ But there is only me here. There is only ever me. I am the one that swallows and spills the words. I take the blue pill and fall through the floor. I have the green one ready for morning when the sickness comes. I keep it at arms length otherwise my head will be forever cemented to my dreams. I ask you for more. But you do not bring them. Aah. That is where you are. Hidden in the blue. The warmth is inside there. Your body comes from within it and I hold onto this disappearing rabbit as if it is my own heart.

Blue Coat

I buy the same coat as you. Long. Blue. Wool. Mine has brown buttons. Yours blue.

It isn’t until I find you again that I realise I am wearing a memory to keep warm. Not a coat.

I see you outside the camera shop. Looking at posters of cameras. Something you can take pictures on that nobody will see. Only chance would find us lurking on a film. A shadow of something exchanged. A shared echo in time and place.

We move on knowing that we will slip through time. Our faces too invisible to be etched on waxy paper or passed through hands and lovingly creased with time. I look at your mouth for words but there are none. There are no letters left to exchange. Nothing to record.

I laugh silently as we pass the toy and chocolate shop. There is a game in the window called ‘Who Am I?’

We walk to the water. Not together. A little behind. A little in front. We switch places like dancers accepting and refusing centre stage. We do not need each other for guidance. At the railings we stop as one. Stand side by side. I feel you. I hope you feel me. We hold hands to keep warm. Stay connected for a while.

We take the next step together. No slips. No slides. No doubts. A matching pair of blue arms reaching for the sky.

The Boots

I feel my demise. As I lie down and force my eyes shut against the sickness. As I bandage my feet in order to put my boots on. Without bandages my feet wear away. There is so much pain. From face to feet. Little parts of me get ground down by the wind every day. I show no remorse. Yet I feel each slice of separation from myself. Each little loss. I wish for my footsteps to make a noise. For someone to hear me coming. Or going. But I am as hollow as the snow that falls. The only trail of evidence is the blood left behind on my socks. But nobody sees that. I wash them out silently at the sink. Trying not to catch my gaze in the frosted tiles.

The little girl in the Post Office grabbed her mummy’s coat sleeve and pointed at me. I wondered where the finger was headed and realised it was me. My feet shuffled in shame. I hung my head. Closed my eyes for a second to re-boot and disappear. How did I become this? The shear effort of inhabiting myself feels too great. I forget how many stamps I need. Even posting away my wishes is too much to accomplish these days.

They say wait another six months. Another year. Things will change. The words mean nothing. All I wish for is sleep. Six months. A year. It’s just more time to erode in. I know as well as they do that there is no chance of a revival. There is a point beyond which nothing can be repaired. A point at which you can no longer claim yourself back from the wind.

My head bounces restlessly on the pillow. I am aware enough to know that it is shutting down. The visions wake me up laughing. I am a little girl playing with paper dolls. That was happy. Two hours later I am crying. You tore them up. That was sad. It is all leaving me. I am emptying myself out. Draining every last memory so I can depart.

If I cannot sleep then I hope the departure is quick because my hands are too tired to stay at this sink for another six months. Another year. Silently washing out blood.

The Antidote

It was nice. How he turned around and asked me if I was alright. A real antidote. I looked behind me expecting to see a straggling dog or child. I couldn’t quite believe he had noticed me. I smiled. Me? Smile. I’m fine thanks. Thank you. Smile. Maybe it’s odd to be cradling your head against the railings on a winter’s afternoon. Not as odd as other days. But he hasn’t seen them.

It is too cold now to sit on the wall and count out loud. How winter makes my heart fall. That I may have to sit still indoors waiting for the hours to turn by. If I can’t leave the house by 9am I get stuck. Wondering what it is what and where I should go. As long as I keep moving then all such questions fade and fall and my feet and hands sink back into their own obsessions. Shop. (Clockwise). Apples. Milk. Bread. Wine. Maybe one of the chocolate bars by the till that play into your impulses. If I take one it is a plan. There is no room in me for impulsiveness. With impulse I lose hold of the railings and fall.

Nothing in this life is random. ‘John the Immortal’ believed that you die only because you make the wrong decisions. Almost choose it. I wonder if he thinks that now he is fifty.

I carry on with my walk. Think about what would have happened if I’d said ‘No. I am not alright.’ But that isn’t inside me. How can I explain that I left the building because the neighbour was laying out her underwear on the stairs and shouting through the letter box. I had rehearsed what I’d say to her. Ran along the lines of ‘fuck off’. But I can’t carry that off without shaking and I know if she sniffs out fear she will ring my doorbell for hours. Best to keep walking until she gets cold and goes in and puts her clothes back on.

All these things hang in a fog above me. I tried not to learn their names. Tried not to recognise them on the street. But they have seeped into my world. As unwanted as smudged ink on paper inscribed with carefully chosen words. It seems impossible to scrub them away now they are here.

But things fade. This winter is not last winter. The things that make me hold my head against the railings are the same but somehow different. These people will at some point become old characters in a story. Immortalised like John but not actually there. Eventually I may even forget them.

That makes me feel better as I come home to warm my hands. At least today I can think of the man who noticed me standing alone in the cold. I may keep him in my story.

Metal

The boy in the wheelchair shouts ‘mama, mama, mama’. He speaks like a child but his voice has broken. I feel sick. I have to walk home quickly with my head down so the world cannot stab me any more. You said I am cold and I do not feel yet people make me ache. I see shoes worn down past the tread. Tired eyes. Trembling hands. Lips slightly bruised. And my face; my face screams like that boy. Reaching out but not knowing what I’m asking for.

I come home and sit on the kitchen floor. I like to cut up wire with the pliers. It calms me. I make a little pile of wire threads. Stack them up and count them. When I run out I cut paper into squares. When the squares are so small the scissors nip my fingers I sit in the dark and let my hands trace the ridges of my flesh. Ten years ago I stood at the sink and cut off all my hair. Kept on cutting until my fingers bled too. I bite my lip and stare at the silver blades. Now it seems important to keep my hair on. Like it’s the last remaining cover I have. I weigh up the options. Snip, snip, snip. I look at myself in the steel. It’s not like doing it will make anyone pander to my needs. I put the scissors down. I am not a girl worth saving.

I sit on the floor until the light fades then shuffle to the switch. I hate to turn on the light. Illuminate the shit. Feel every corner of silence. I am no longer viable yet I do not know how to stop being when there is nothing left of myself to chop away.

I could wake up and become anything but I would rather sit here and cut my wire and paper. It gives me nothing. It takes nothing away. That is the one sure thing I know in advance. The one thing that doesn’t leave me clutching at my head. It is my order. My blanket. My mother. Sometimes I think this is the best place in the world. In this half-light. Slowly disappearing. So far from what I was there is nobody left to remember me. Or make me change.

My hands stop clutching the pliers and my stomach jumps. Just the effort it would take to change and learn how to live makes me want to scream ‘mama, mama, mama’ into the pitch-black air.

What a differrence a day makes

The blue and white police tape lies abandoned like confetti on the road. I am in a thousand places in my head. The flowers lie on the grass. Their colour drained. The message cards faded. The writing disappeared. The words long forgotten. I pick around the rubbish of other people’s lives trying to give myself substance. I am a thief.

He hammers on the ceiling. I shout back. You little shit. The woman without a voice can make noise. You don’t like that. You think you have me pegged. I slam the cupboard doors. Reach for the glass a hundred times and scrape it over the work surface. You will never have me pegged. I will wear you down. I wear everybody down. I know how. They wore every last breath out of me. I can sit on the cold floor for hours. Sitting it out. Waiting until you leave. I can be as loud as you. As furious as you. I smile as you bang out with those angry little feet. I turn my TV down and look out the window. Run. Run. Run. With your shopping bag full of socks and beer. I need an empty place. An empty road upon which to play. Nobody gets to place a foot there. No one gets past me.

I have plans you see. I have seen a thousand things. I have stored them up and collected them. Like people collect pictures of babies and weddings. These are the scraps out of which I build my story. I will scatter them like confetti on my empty road. They will be left there forever. They won’t fade like the flowers and the cards. No one will forget the rubbish that I leave.

I am full to the brim with my stories as I step out. But as the quiet bites my ears they fall from me like stuffing. I see myself. I am an empty toy rolling in the road. Unloved. Forgotten. Faded. What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was nice.

I had twenty-one pounds and eighty-two pence in my wallet. Two tens. One pound. Fifty pence. Twenty. Ten and two. They wrote it down on the carbon copy paper in black ball-point pen. Just rubbish. I knew. But it wasn’t the measure of me.

The Walker

I clutch the bag. It is with great delight that I am leaving this place. It is 1.30 am. It takes me a while to find my bearings. I was sleeping on the bathroom floor. Fully clothed and ready to go. I have been sitting in the dark planning an escape route for ten months. Ten months of waking up every hour through the night. Confused. Sweating. Hoping that all of this is a bad dream and I will come to in my real home. But I know there is no other place than this. That’s what made me sweat. You can’t shake off the concrete reality of where you exist in this exact moment. Not completely anyway. The green pills helped. They made the man who spat in my face nothing more than a blur of beard and raincoat. It is odd. Endless nights spent in the dark puzzling and I now feel more comfortable being spat at than smiled at. There is a young girl with long hair in the library. She always smiles at me as I hide behind the books. It makes me want to cry. Don’t be nice to me. It might make me feel. I pretend to read the words. Really I am just there to hear the sound of voices. Children singing nursery rhymes and the click-click of the scanner over the bar-codes. Sometimes I see my face in the glass doors or shelving units. It startles me too. It’s not surprising people spit or smile. It was without question that I needed to be re-defined.

I don’t know why I am taking a bag really. Just some clothes and a few wash-things. I don’t expect I will need either but I feel the need to carry something. Makes a woman look more purposeful. As if I am really off to greet that husband and son I lost. I expect after a while I will ditch the bag. I won’t need it any more. I will become as invisible as the paving stones that will eat me up and carry me away. I won’t need a dark room to hide in any more. The whole world will become my dark room. I will become one of life’s walkers.

I shut the door. Leave the man upstairs pacing and the woman across from me screaming. I put the keys in the outside lock and sellotape the note I have written to the door ‘THERE IS NO NEED TO FORCE ENTRY. I AM NOT HERE.’ When they come in to scavenge through my belongings they will find the plastic ID card and my documents on the kitchen table. I will leave it up to them to shred me up and consign me to some government dump. I am disappearing without a trace. With a new face. And I cannot tell you how happy I feel.

Bright Idea

There is blood on the curtains. My blood. There is the temptation to wash it off but I keep it there. It is proof. Proof that I still exist. That the blood still moves around my body. That I spill out into the world and touch it.

I twitch at the table. The wave is strong inside me. I fight it down. I close my eyes to stop everything. Literally stop and wait for time to grind by. It is the only way to keep myself going. If I look up and see myself everything will end.

My big black watch counts the minutes. When I cannot control the surge they take it off my wrist and put it in a carrier bag with my clothes. My time keeps on ticking even if my watch waits in the bag. It makes me cry when I have to get up and reclaim my time. I know how painful the minutes to come will be. That there will be a day when closing my eyes will not be enough to stop me.

The day goes. The day always goes no matter if you want it to or not. The TV flickers with clues of better lives. Puzzles I can’t complete. I sit on the floor. I can’t bear the chair. It is dented with the weight of me. It is too much to sit on it and feel how much time I have lost.

I look at the balcony and imagine falling. Another bright idea. Anything just to change this day and the next. But I know the concrete will not remould me. It will not change me or what is. I draw the curtains to stop my hand reaching for the lock.

I stand at the window in darkness. Let the blood stain fall away into another day lost. I keep my feet pressed in the carpet. Anchor myself. Force myself to stay. There is no view. I lost the ability to see any thing but the spillages and fingerprints many years ago.

Maybe when the light comes up I can follow them and find myself. If I find myself then maybe I can wash the blood away.

Number Four

I live at number four. Opposite the drunk and underneath the tweaker. The police come. When she is banging in the hall. When he carries black bin bags in and out.

Once he came back with a bicycle. There was a plastic bag over the pole where the seat should have been and he rode it standing up.

Drunk-lady screams at the five year old twins who play on the stairs. Threatens to cut their hair off whilst they sleep. I hear her outside my door at two am laughing.

I hope the children are asleep then.

Nobody knows my name. I wonder what they call me. Strange lady. Quiet one. Girl with the face. Once drunk-lady said I was ‘fucking ugly’. I walked by and didn’t say a word. People stop and stare wherever I go. It would be nice to come home and feel safe. Feel good. But if this is where I have to be I know better than to fight. Fighting back makes bad people hurt you more. There’s no shame in playing dead.

I sit behind the curtains with a small light on. Listening. I hate that I feel their lives. I hate that I define myself through them.

Tweaker-guy runs to the corner everyday at 5pm. He runs back at 5.10. He runs everywhere. Up the stairs. Down the stairs. Across the floor from fridge to cooker. From wardrobe to bed. I hear every footstep. I feel every speed-filled step.

Sometimes the police knock on my door. I know it is them because the knock is different from drunk-lady and tweaker-guy. It is firm and steady. Immediate but not menacing. I do not let them in. If they come in they will see and I will get taken away again. I always become the criminal. The bad girl. Drunk-lady and tweaker-guy are drunk-lady and tweaker-guy in here and out there. There’s no surprise. I am different. I hide the things that kill me. I don’t steal. I don’t gesture to the world to pick me up or help me. People don’t know what to do if I spill out. The only thing to do is lock me back in again.

I try not to feel stuck. I try to keep going. Today I went back to the place where people still used my name. My face screams even though I am in silence. I have made myself so disgusting nobody can touch me. Nobody can knock down the door and get in.

A woman broke the silence. She laid hands on me as I stepped off the bus. I am spiritual she said and I was told to touch you. To heal you. Her hand on my shoulder made me want to cry. I do exist. Thank you I said.

There are no spirits. There is no healing but her hand reaching out was treasure.

Friction

I have spent a hundred years by the sea. I will have to stay for a hundred more and a hundred more after that. It is the last place for empty souls to gather. The last piece of land to cling onto now the world has disappeared. I hope the sea will eat the rocks and let us slip away but the rocks hold strong. Defiant. The arcades and candy floss stalls fell into silence many years ago. The hairs of dead children rest on the plastic cars and carousel horses. No more sounds of laughter and weekends. No more children. No more future. Just this time going on and on. We jump started the carousel and penny machines but there was no fun left inside us. No mystery. The coins dropped into our hands useless. Going round in even smaller, mechanical circles destroyed our will to survive. So now they remain idle. We know when somebody goes to rest by them that they will never return. The smell of candy floss replaced by slow decomposition. The friction between life as it was and life as it is. Sometimes I wish the sea would stop. It is so relentless. I walk up to the highest point of the sea wall and scream. ‘Just let me rest’. Sometimes I feel I should yield to it. It is calling all our ends. But I cannot surrender before my time. Maybe soon life will come back. I know it never will but the water is so dark and empty. It makes me scared. Even the fish wouldn’t welcome my polluted flesh. I can’t leave. If I leave I would lose the memory of her. Of sitting on the bench and talking about how big the world was and how we were more than the sea. I miss her. I miss the world. I have to remember to keep her with me. I go to the deserted bus. 502. The bus which carried people from the good place to here. It is the last bus. People no longer come in. Nobody can get out. Sometimes I sit in a rusty seat and close my eyes. I see the driver and feel the wheels moving. I hold a cup of instant hot chocolate in my hands. I don’t like to open my eyes and feel the cold and the stillness. It seems the sea is the only thing spinning and breathing and I am stuck in this dead place. Spinning and breathing but never moving.

The Corner

I have been waiting in the corner of other people’s lives. Quietly waiting, watching, not being. Ten years. Twenty years. And I have all but disappeared. It is strange. I never thought I would be the one who was left behind. But here I am. Walking in circles. Driving myself crazy. Screaming inside. What about me? I may have been good for nothing but I was always there. I never questioned. I never said no. Now I need you all so much. But there are new lives to be had. Better lives. And I am stuck like mud.

I tried to find a voice. But it was all wrong. It whined and moaned. It was pathetic. Nothing but a child’s voice. It made me feel such shame. For a while the kernel of misery inside me came out in tears and shouts. But it gets tiring. It gets old. Nobody wants to hear. They are all busy moving. Living. You were nice when you didn’t say anything. We liked you then.

The silence is different now. Nobody quite trusts it any more.

It’s funny how you can lose everything and still fear change. But losing everything means losing hope. It’s not an abrupt removal of all things goods. It’s the slow drip, drip of becoming less and less. You are no longer even an invisible presence in the corner. You’re not a fucking nuisance. You’re just dead weight. A grey shadow casting a net around the people trying to escape.

At first you wield the knife and try to get out too. Then it drops limp from your hand. Rusts in the puddle of apathy at your feet. It’s amazing how your body can keep breathing when there is no desire to be.

But there’s always something. The peaceful slide into night. Lying curled up in bed saying goodnight to my family of stuffed toys and dead pets. God protect us and keep us safe. It trips off my tongue in a voice loud and clear. There is always someone in the corner. Quiet. Watching me. Keeping me safe.

Intense

The devil lives in all of us. That’s what my daddy used to say. He used to shout at us if we looked at the picture books. ‘Do something useful with your time kid’. And so we crept around mopping up dust and hiding ourselves under carpets. The house was full of feeling scared.

Daddy didn’t know many words. His favourite word was fuck. He said it over and over. The fucking dog. You fucking kids.

I knew how to avoid daddy. I screamed back and he sent me away to my room. In my room I learnt magic words. The nice stranger in the bookshop gave me special books. The pages smelt like bacon frazzles and they sat heavy in my tiny, grubby hands. I sounded out the words. ‘All bad things will disappear.’ ‘You can make anything a reality.’ I didn’t know what the words meant. We hadn’t learnt them in school. In school Dick and Jane were still going to the shop to buy milk. I liked Dick and Jane. Their mummy and daddy loved them and they wore sweaters.

I got good at the strange words. After a while I didn’t need the books to remember the words. In fact the books disappeared from the shopping bag under my bed. I checked the bag after school. In there was the broken recorder. I had it for my birthday. I loved it so much my hand was sweaty when I tried to clean it out and the mouthpiece split. I was too scared to tell mummy or daddy so I hid it. Like I hid myself. I didn’t tell mummy or daddy about the boys who threw stones at my feet as I walked home from school. I learnt to run and asked for boots when my feet grew.

After a while I no longer said the magic words. I just thought them. Then I didn’t need to think them. They were just inside me. They grew as wild as my hair grew. As I became a girl. Not the boy my daddy wanted. One day mummy was at work. I made tea for daddy and called him from the garage. Daddy shouted. He did not say thank you. He did not say well done for opening the pilchard tin my daughter. That made me sad. As I tried not to cry daddy disappeared. One minute he was in the alleyway. The next he was gone. At first my heart skipped. Then I looked at the stinking fish in the oven tin and smiled. I washed them away down the sink. As I did something strange left my lips. A song. A child’s song.

The house was nice and quiet and I went to my room and got my colouring pencils and my book and I drew and drew until the sky went dark. I loved my pictures. When it came to bed time I cleaned my teeth and got ready for bed. I got under the covers and the dog came and lay beside me. He sighed and nuzzled me. We slept a deep, deep sleep.

In the morning there was no shouting. I woke up and smiled. I already knew the next page in the book. I opened my bedroom door and the smell of toast and butter filled my nose. I tripped down the stairs. ‘Morning mummy. Morning daddy.’ And they said the best thing in the world. ‘Good morning Darling.’ Just like in Dick and Jane. And I just knew that I would never need any more strange words. Any more strange stories. This was the perfect ending and I was happy.

Good

Once half becomes normal. One becomes all. It consumes you. I didn’t notice the changes at first. But there are moments. Moments when I feel my brain trying to work. Moments when I can see how easily I will become the man at the bus stop in piss-stained jogging bottoms smoking paper. Oblivious, if not proud, of stinking. Of falling from existence. At first I didn’t accept being here. I protested ‘I don’t belong’. Nobody believed I was scared. But I felt fragile at every noise. Every commotion in the hallway. Every policeman climbing the stairs. It is not the place that scares me. It is the dead end of my being that is stacked in every beige brick. But it soon becomes normal. It became home. There is no other place left to go. If only I could click my heels three times and be somewhere better. Now it’s three swallows and the place doesn’t look so bad. But it is not right. The uneasiness is rampant within me. I want to scream like the lady next door screams. This is not what was meant to happen. I am not supposed to be like this. But there is nobody left to hear. Screams fade down the hallway like cheap lager flushes down the pipes in this building. That is the cruellest trick of my life; that I have made every good thing disappear. I killed hope. The one thing nobody could steal from me. That is the torture most deadly to my existence. I killed the good in me. I was once a good girl with bad thoughts. Now I am all bad and I am so consumed I cannot stop the tremor. One turns to two. Two to three and three to four. Then they find me in my pissed stained jogging bottoms. Two to three to four weeks. If they find me at all. Nobody chooses to leak through their neighbour’s ceiling. In that body. Under that cheap fabric. Was somebody trying to be better. A good girl. A good boy. Somebody who could have been.

Curious

My body was taken under blue lights. It was an easy theft. Nothing more than an exchange of gases and air. They had been stalking me for thirty days. It was my fault that they caught me. I was so tired I couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming. When the thoughts came so they found me. I could do nothing as they laid me flat and carried me away.

They inserted the tube and I felt the wrench of my lungs slowly collapsing. My body bucked against the pressure. Choking. Gasping. Trying not to swallow the fluid. My body slowly quieted. Adapted to the pain. Resigned itself. My eyes kept looking however. Curious to see the last sights. Searching for some comfort. Some understanding. They rolled like doll’s eyes as I was moved from hip to hip. I felt the warm flow of blood gathering on the back of the paper gown they had dressed me in. When they were finished I was returned to my back. There I heard the descending click of the heart monitor. My pulse counting down. I became dizzy. The room became grey. My head overflowed with the chewed-up fuzz of old thoughts.

I had to see the monitor. As if it would help. I turned my head and felt the breath leave my mouth. I saw a green line. A few numbers. Forty-five. Forty-four. Forty-three. Watching the descent was almost calming. Like I was in control. Underneath the pulse there were smaller numbers. 18.30. 31.10. I smiled. Recognised the number. I imagined my body a hollowed-out lantern. Like the one I made with Kevin when he was six years old. I felt warm imagining the weight of his tiny body across my chest even though my teeth were chattering. I smelt the autumn morning on his hair even though my nose was filled with the smell of my body emptying. I remembered his lips busy with chocolate. Kevin’s face glowed in the light of the lantern. He was making this ok. In his tiny voice he asked me the same question he had asked at this exact time ten years ago. Just before he answered the door and they took him.

‘Trick or treat mummy.’ And I answered him softly the way I did then. ‘Always choose the treat Kevin. Always choose the treat.’

The Geese

The Canadian Geese are back on the river. They duck their heads in and out of the water. The sun shines around their bodies. A little shimmer of ripples catching the light. She wonders why they would choose to come here. What internal flight plan brings them back to this empty place year after year? The same thoughtless flight that brought her here perhaps. Except she cannot fly away once the weather turns. She is stuck. Looking out the window for signs of life. Drinking pink wine which swills in her stomach with the painkillers. She is too ashamed to buy alcohol which will make her drunk but not sick. Pink wine is fit for ladies. Decent people who share meals with their friends and talk. As she drinks it down like medicine she sees bodies behind windows. Their size ballooned by the effect of orange lights behind them. She wants to speak to the bodies she sees. But she doesn’t talk. Not to anyone. The words inside her are knotted-up in an immense lump that she will never bring up. They held her arms by her side and kept her behind a locked door. They asked her if she wanted to leave the small room and she said no. She was scared of anything bigger. Her whole life is closed up inside a locked room. Barren. She walks and walks but never finds anywhere to be. She takes a moment to look at the river. She huddles up in the little cotton coat that barely keeps the wind from her ribs. Fluffs herself like the geese. Roots herself against the unending cold of winter.

Harvest

She gathers up the words they throw at her. She remembers every label. Every story they tell about her. So many years collecting. Like a harvest of letters. She has disappeared under the weight of everything they call her. Every meaning they have fixed to the things she has done. She sits confused at night wondering how she got lost. How she became a parable not a girl; a warning to others but lost in herself.

She knows why she is a story. They no longer know what to say. She confuses them. Faceless yet present. They scrounge around for words. Ways to deflect her when all she wants is for somebody to come close.

She sits in the office with the paper in her hand. Today she is barren and isolated. She smiles and nods. Inside she is in another place. She is always in another place. She has many rich places to go.

But this magical thinking is no longer magical. She is getting tired and so old. Even closing her eyes to find friends makes her ache.

The weight of words is killing her. Each one pounds inside her head until the only place left to hide is sleep. There the words can’t hit her. She is just asleep. There is no meaning in the darkness for them. For her it is a beautiful pause. A pause they always disturb.

If only they would let her sleep. Left alone in the quiet and the dark she would follow the trail of words and pick them up like candy. Left alone in the quiet and the dark she would find her way out of the forest and just be.

The Wall

The girl sits on the wall. She takes a photo of the bag between her feet. The button on her phone clicks a hiss of confirmation that the moment is recorded. She likes the bag. It is green and yellow. The young girl in the shop gave it to her to put her wet umbrella in even though she didn’t buy anything. The girl likes that. When she is bouncing around the beige room they try to take the bag away from her. She shouts for it. She would not put that bag over her head. It was full of somebody being kind.

In the bag are the girl’s calculations. She remembers when she miscalculated and the clock went backwards. She saw her body from above stuck like lead-weight in the corner bed watching the moment over and over again. She would not like to be stuck on the ceiling again. The thought of it makes her heart pound.

The girl bought two bottles of apple juice. She gave the exact money to the cashier. As if being perfect would absolve her. Water makes her gag. If she has to drink it she moves her feet when she swallows. That stops her throat from convulsing.

On the wall she looks at the bridge. Always in the hope that it might lead somewhere. She wonders how things would look from the other side. If she would still be stuck no matter which way she was looking.

The girl looks at the photo of her feet and her bag and thinks this is ridiculous. I am ridiculous. Who carries a tiny carrier bag full of the unbearable weight of Wednesday morning.

She thinks of how they will ridicule her when they strip off her shoes and clothes. The shame makes her go behind the brick wall and snap the lid off the first juice. She retches thinking ‘now I will hate apple juice.’

A man in a green T-shirt walks by with a red dog. She has lost her place. She smiles but feels like crying. He walks by but looks back. As unsure of the picture as she is.

The girl would have liked to have told the man in the green T-shirt that she was in trouble. But she didn’t have the right to do that. She didn’t have the right to ask anyone for help.

The girl runs out of juice. Next time I will need three bottles she thinks.

The story has become as inevitable as sitting on the steps waiting to disappear. Expecting the concrete and strangers to hold you.

As she tells the story she realises. The green and yellow bag. The man in the green T-shirt. It is the colour of an ambulance.

Essential

It is essential to remain calm in a crisis. She remembered this as the smoke started to fill the room and people began to squeal. Fat Pete the photocopy-man was first out the door. With some relish he put on the yellow tabard and blew his whistle. Wet-Emily and Soppy-Sarah made it first to the exit. They had been on the hockey team and knew how to sprint. They held hands and sobbed. What fuckers she thought. She pictured them sitting on the back of the ambulance in tin foil blankets recounting their near-death experience to the best looking paramedic. Some things never change. The middle-aged ladies (none of whom warranted comedy names they were so amorphous) gathered handbags and photos from their desks. She felt the groan of the floor under their combined weight as they walked away. She sat at her desk. It was strange. It was just as she expected. The story ran in a perfect arc right from the moment she bought the kerosene and matches. She knew she would be left in the flames but just a little part of her hoped somebody would have finally seen her.

The Door

The sun bounced off her hair and made a golden sheen. It was six o’clock. Leaving time. She was running late. They had watched each other for months. Occasionally they talked. He hinted. She tried to hint. They were a history of missed connections and awkward glances. My god, just ask me she thought day after day as she followed behind his titan frame. The mouse pursuing the lion. Yet only his smile was bigger than her. And neither could summon up their lust. Then, on this day he stood in the electric door with his mobile in his hand and said ‘Julie, I have to ask you a question.’ This was it. She knew. She let the sun soak her hair for every inch of its life. Come on, come on, say it. As his lips formed the shape of the next line of words the door clicked. That annoying little mechanical grunt when someone was hovering in the middle. He knew it. She knew it. He had a second to decide which side of the door to be on. She worked the sun. He looked at his shoes. Then – bang. He was on the wrong side. Gone; and the sun dripped of her hair onto the floor. A bleeding puddle of what could have been.

Flashback

When I first went to the new world I carried with me two pairs of trousers and one pair of beige shoes. The trousers used to be black but I had worn them since school and they were now a dusty grey. They hovered inches above my ankles. Not long enough to cover the little shoes which pinched my toes and offered no warmth from the biting winds and gusts of grey smoke that whistled up the vertiginous streets.

The first evening I slept on a metal cot. I was so tired that even the poking springs couldn’t stop me from sleeping. I had one of those dreams where you drop from the pavement and wake up with a bump on the mattress; where you actually feel your fall. I knew what it meant as soon as I woke up and looked out of the twenty-fifth floor window. I was living above myself.

I remember trying to find food. I left the room and ventured out at 7am. I found a deli. It was full of boxes and cans that were strange but instantly identifiable. I knew what was in the boxes and the cans but the pictures and colours weren’t quite the same as from back there. The discrepancy unnerved me. I chose to eat an apple. I ate and walked. The taste of an apple is apparently not universal and I tossed half of it away in a scrumpled-up napkin the deli-man gave me when he said ‘enjoy your breakfast’. As if I could.

When night came I got on a bus. It was the only thing I could think of doing. I had no fixed place to go. We circled the streets. The lights trailing in an orange blur. Nobody spoke to each other. I had a camera. I was too scared to hold it up to my eye so shot from the cover of my bag. Pressed the button as we motored by buildings that I thought I should remember. Places that may be important later.

I lasted five days in the tall world. Then I had to move on. I rolled up the paper-thin trousers and winced as the shoes gripped my feet again. There was much further to go. When I got to a quieter town I went to a chemist and developed my film.

I have kept the pictures. There are thirty shots of blackness and trailing lights. A flashback of time. Places I have been but never quite touched.

The Safe Room

I drink in the toilet. My safe room. The world can’t engulf me in there. As six o’clock comes I switch him on and close my eyes. Going under is imminent. The flames of the amber syrup gently burns my throat. I put the wedge under the door. I always tamper with the locks. To keep myself safe. To keep people from saving me. This is my place. My safe room. And when it is all over I can wipe the bowl. Flush my stomach. Turn him off. Open the door and leave. Smiling of things unknown.

Love

She stands in front of the mirror and thinks the hardest thing to love is myself. I am this body. This head full of bouncing beans. I am these eyes that have witnessed, forgotten and imagined. I am me. Yet me is so far away. Tucked up in old clothes thrown away. Bags used and hidden. Food eaten and digested. Places been. Places stuck in. Places yet to go.

She looks sad. I am guilty of not loving enough. Of loving too much. Of being scared of love. Of not even noticing love if it passes me by (or letting it touch me). It is as if I repel every good thing and sink myself in the mud she thinks.

However dark. However many times I walk up and down by the water with the carrier bag and the tin. Scared and running. Love will always be there. I just have to take it in my arms and mould it to my flesh.

Love can save me she says to herself. And then whispers : but only if I let it.

Clean

The polka dot coat hangs in the hallway. It is the coat of a girl who wants to be. It hangs there. A perfect A-shape. Swooping. She looks at it as she walks silently through the hall. Into the bathroom where bad things happen. To the sink that has claimed her life. The pipes so clean you can see through them. Metal that is disappearing even though she has only been in this place for six months now. She remembers the old sinks so well. She spent most of her days in front of them. In the first place the heavy rusty taps never shut off. She used the drips to wet the wash cloth. She used the wash cloth in the middle of the night. When the silence and heat burnt her up and she never quite believed morning would come. With each house and each sink came a mirror in which she watched herself disappear. Like the girl on the TV who cried. But she was different. Somebody saw her and took her to a room with soft chairs and pillows. There are no pillows in the girl’s life. Only the harsh edges of the mirror. The mirror is as important as the water and the sink. In it she has to meet her eyes. Witness it. Be it. In the grey place she took the mirror to the kitchen and sat at the same table where she ate. Sometimes it bit into her lips. But they didn’t believe her even then. I don’t see the stupid man said. I don’t see. She concluded to herself that what she does is not real. Except she knows she is holding up the evidence of herself for everyone to see. But they don’t see. And if they don’t see she screams in her head, how can they ever believe? She is stuck in the water going round and round in the plughole. The drip, drip, drip of this place. The silence swallowing her up is bigger than she could imagine. She feels how it is pulling her under now. How it will eventually claim her and bring her down like an invisible tree being felled in the wood. She silently cradles the knowledge of where she will fall as they tell her how strong she is. I am not strong she thinks. I am a good liar. She lies awake at night with the buzzing thought that being clever killed her. It is worse now. Telling people but losing the words. It was better when no one knew. It was better when it was hers. Trying to make them believe destroys her. Stopping is a dream. Strength is a dream. There is one person left who allows her to be. She holds his name like treasure. They tell her he is not real but she knows where to find him. His hands led her to the polka dot coat. He carefully takes it off the hanger and covers her aching shoulders. He believes she is worth soft chairs and pillows. He allows her to wear the coat. When she wears the coat she has the strength to walk away; to leave the sink and mirror behind forever.

Navy Girl

Francesca was demure. As she dressed in the morning in her navy skirt and white blouse she caught her pale face in the mirror. The white plastic pearls hung limply on her collar bone. Did anyone realise they were fake? That she was fake? That underneath the navy and blue she was a volcano. Volatile and ready to erupt.

Francesca’s face was numb but in her head she played the story. She was walking outside the fish and chip shop. He, this person who had followed her, would come up from behind. She would not be shocked but would instead deftly elbow him in the septum. He would crumble to his knees crying. She would stand above him victorious. Her foot resting firmly on his throat rendering him into submission until the policeman arrived. There was always a policeman who came to help. He would applaud her strength and the gasping onlookers would hail her courage and magnificence.

Francesca turned away from the mirror. She couldn’t stand to tell herself this story anymore. She couldn’t stand the navy and white. She wanted to rip off the plastic beads and scream. Instead her tiny feet - clad in the plain, black ballet pumps she favoured, led her on the same path she followed everyday. She liked these shoes because they made no noise when she walked. It was as if she didn’t exist. It was best that way. She would never offend the world she moved in. And the world would never guess how much it offended her.

Treatment

The girl waits. Her hair on the pillow an electric halo. They say she ripped the floor boards up. They say she was delirious. That she handed over everything. The girl knows this is a lie. The girl knows she would hand over nothing. She would never give in however strong their hands or big their boots. The girl always plans the next move even when she loses herself. She is planning it now. She knows the place to go. The time to be there. What she must wear. What she must carry in the bag. They remove the girl. They ask the girl to sit still. But she can’t stay still. To stop is to stop being. The girl escapes by the fire door. The girl has made herself so invisible that no alarm bells ring. When they find her drinking coke outside the store they call her by the wrong name. She smiles and says ‘that is not me.' Nobody can find me she thinks and feels powerful. She gets taken in the white van to the place where she must wait. She can wait. She can be quiet. She can be still. She can sit out the treatment because she knows she is clever; cleverer than them. They will never be able to find the electricity inside her. They will never be able to take anything from her. When it is time she will leave to find what she desires.

Wait

I wait for him to come home. 6.35. The tyres tread the concrete. The door slams. His shoes clickety-clack down the hallway. The sound of shoes unnerves me. My feet have been bare for years. No reason to go out. I have waited all day for this, years for this, yet fear it. I fear he will stop coming to me. That there will be nothing to place in my waiting hands. He takes his tie off and drapes it on the back of the chair. So painfully slow. He looks at me. I can see him thinking ‘How’. He puts his hand in his pocket and our eyes meet.

There is nothing left to do any more but give in. I hold out my hand and she takes what she needs from me. Gulps it down with the water she always keeps on the draining board. Waiting for it. Waiting for me to come home. I am so tired but I can’t stop. She wipes the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. She has gone again. She sits in the hallway. Her back and legs against the cool wall. The hard brick is more of a comfort to her than me. I know that. Her head nods and as I carry her she is for a moment mine. I rest her body on the soft pillows. Her eyes are shut but she still looks tired. The kind of tired that sleep never cures.

I can feel you watching me. When the heaviness pulls me under. I feel the gentle touch of your fingers. I picture your baby face. The face which met me and embraced me. Not the one full of lines which sits in the dark watching my breath disappear. I hear you call my name. I feel you shaking me. Wake up. Wake up. I wish that I could wake up. I wish that in the morning we could forget today. I wish more than anything that I could feel you. That I could touch you too.

I feel her emptiness. It is my emptiness too. She has taken away today, yesterday and tomorrow. I hold her but she holds everything over me. I raise my hand. Place my fingers around her neck. I cover up the pink marks as if they have never been. I close my eyes and press down until her pulse becomes mine. I count out the beats. As if in holding her down I will become her. If I become her then I can free her. I can save us both from this dream.

Faith

The old writer lived in a boxcar by the river. This was fill land that had once been a dump heap, but it was not used anymore.

He lived on a small welfare check and he walked a mile to the grocery store once a week to buy lard and canned beans and tomatoes and vegetables and cheap whiskey..

Uncle Bill walked back up the steps to his porch. Blew the smoke off the tip of his rifle and muttered under his breath ‘love your neighbour’. All he wanted to do was sit at his beat up desk with the old typewriter and a glass of Jack. I can see you Uncle Bill. From the beige world: the place where you smile at me every time I go to the fridge for a swig. The cut pinky in the waistcoat a reminder. The neat suit of deception. Uncle Bill may seem like a gentleman. Old, wise, benign. But he’d say don't kid yourself kid. Be aware of the old. They talk shit and lies.

We laugh over our glasses. Are these my words or his? Uncle Bill’s hands never shake. Not even in the morning. He knows what he has to do. Sit at the desk. Shut the door to the world. Fire off a round when someone comes knocking. Find that real world. The one you can believe in. The place in your head. The dream. The intoxication. The black line. Write it out no matter what. And keep writing until your hand can’t move anymore. Until the good Lord steals your last breath.

One more question. What does life teach you Uncle Bill? Life teaches you nothing kid. Words teach you all.

The old writer can’t write anymore because he had reached the end of words, the end of what can be done with words. And then?

I pick up the whiskey and the rifle and the pen.



(Thanks to William S.Burroughs for the borrowed words..)

Dangerous

We awoke and had toast. He ate around the edges making the bread smaller bite by bite. He was contemplating. Looking at the street below. The cat was stretched out on the open window sill. I think you should do it he said. There’s no point hanging onto something which is dead. I told him it was part of him. That things would change if his locks were shorn. He swallowed his toast and licked his fingers. Resolute. Do it he said and he turned his chair towards the window and looked out. I stood behind him. Lined the scissors up along the bottom of his hairline. I was unsure. Sick with the danger of change. I had to grip the scissors because my fingers were slick with sweat. The sun bounced off the metallic blades. I set my mouth and focussed my eyes. With a crisp shearing sound the scissors cut though his hair. With a sigh I watched his curls fall to my feet. The last memory of summer falling. The last part of him I could touch passing through my fingers. Samson swept up and thrown away.

View

I see your home from my window.

The place where you live.

Your home.

At least I think that's what I see. What is real is not all that I see.

The view makes my stomach turn. Three o 'clock in the afternoon concentrating on the hands going around. The thought of you almost walking through the door. The light of your home spilling out. Reaching out to me sat here in my darkness.

I remember lying on the floor. Toes turned up. Face turned down.

I am always there. Falling below the surface. Below the lips of the window. Just out of reach of the footsteps passing by. Your boots. Black leather. Sharp toe. I imagine. I hear you coming up the stairs. I wait for your hand to touch the glass of my front door. I wait and I wait.

I was unreachable to you. Driftwood in the filth.

I watched your stray hairs gathering on the linoleum. Falling like fairy dust. But filth. Filthy dust. They made me writhe in discomfort. Just thinking of raising my hand to wipe them away made me cry. So they stayed. They are still there. They disappear when my eyes close. Everything disappears when my eyes close. You go too. Just for a moment.

It is not by chance that I sit rigid behind glass and curtain watching you. No lights to betray me. No noise to identify my presence.

You have become my focus point. My panorama. My one vision.

Every face is your face. Every voice you calling to me.

You trap me yet keep me alive.

Just the wish to see you keeps me safe on the floor. Unmoving. Unmovable.

But still dreaming of a better view.

Half Way

I would like to meet the world halfway. But instead I am half in. Half out. Not quite awake. Not quite asleep. Half-hearted. Half-meaning. Half a person (at most).

I sleep to avoid waking. I remain in noise to forget the silence. I make last night last and morning disappear. It is easier than deciding on jam or marmalade. Socks or no socks. Tea or coffee. Closed eyes are my shield. My pause button.

I lie in water. Half-breathing.

I think about the fire. Half-believing.

She has the excuse of being a half-person. Not quite accountable. Not quite responsible. But she was entirely in it. The hand raised. The fist clenched. The words spat out. The match lit. She knew what she was doing. She knew. She still knows. Entirely. She watched. She smiled. She enjoyed what she was doing. It made her feel big. It made her feel stronger than us.

I can only half forget her. Forget that place. Those times.

Now it seems I have been trapped in this half place forever. The darkness. The chaos. It has become all of me. It has become everything. I am stuck down this rabbit hole half shouting for someone to come. My fading voice knows that everyone has long since gone. Pushed away fully by my hands. Rejected. Tired. Bored. Sick of it. Sick of me.

I am left behind. Half thinking. This is not me. This is not me.

I sit on the wall. Half hoping you will see me. My feet hurt. My arms hurt. My head hurts. It will be like this forever. But forever won't be for long. You said that. I will die before you leave. I half want time to pass for it to be done. I half want time to stop so I won't see the end. Won't write the final chapter. I sit back confused. I am writing this but the hand that moves across the paper is no longer mine.

You can make anything a reality. That's what I say. Before I take the shower. Before I pour the drink. Before I shout at you. Punch my fist against the wall. Hold my nose and go under. Walk the fine line. The yellow line. The high line. The half line.

There is a distant dream of being whole. Of getting myself back. To be entirely J. One. All. But half is the portion I am served. Half is the limit of my being. Half is all. Half full. Half empty. Half arsed.

Thank You

I'd like to thank you. Thank you for waking me up. For coming into the kitchen and shaking me. For emptying the containers and leaving me with hollow drawers which smell faintly of the last flat. Damp. Cold. Grey. How I miss that place.

I think I saw you. Waiting at the traffic lights a few days after. I was walking as I always do. Walk until I can't stand any more. I think you saw me but couldn't look. I was looking for another place to get them. I think you knew.

I would like to thank you. Thank you for rubbing my chest so hard there was a bruise in the shape of your fingers. I lie in the bath wondering what my body looked like shaking under the weight of you. I close my eyes not wishing to imagine any more.

I hunt around the flat. Beige. Beige place. There are new things that I notice are missing everyday. I go around the shops slipping things into my pockets. Trying to replace. Trying to re-create the time before. The time before you stood in my kitchen with your green bag. Wearing those big black boots.

I thank you. Thank you for making me cough. Making me breathe. That's enough.

Thank you for saying I was the sickest person you'd ever seen. That makes me feel I don't have to do any more to convince you of who I am. If you are reading. I am not the sickest. I am amalgam of all the sick people who have been in my life and shaped me. I am a copier. An assimilator. A fraud. Or I was. Now I don't know how to stop any more. But I am still here so maybe it isn't real after all?

Still here. Wherever that might be. Certainly not in the mirror. In my face. In these clothes I hang upon me with pins and needles and threads.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

For leaving me in this empty place. For leaving me looking out the window wondering what I will do for the next twenty years. Watch me cry. Watch me be sobbing and contrite as your life passes without sticking to all this empty time. You took away everything. Left me with nothing but a dusty bag of words. Words which don't quite plug the hole. Stories which don't quite tell.

You stood in my kitchen and took me away. Or maybe I gave myself to you. Whatever, the emptiness is making my shoulders ache. Makes me huddle under the blankets whilst the sun is shining outside. Makes every muscle shiver. Makes me gag at the merest sip of water. Makes me remember but forget. Leaves me feeling cheated.

How many times is it now?

Before the next time. I need to say

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Letter

This is a letter to you.

To you. The person I have hurt so much. The person who I expect to fill their pockets and shoes with my unhappiness and confusion. The person I always expect to be there. After. Before. In the midst of my fury. Sorry is not enough.

I pick up the messages. Days later. Weeks later. I can hear it in your voice. The fear underneath the strength. It is so confusing how we reached this place. Almost too big to understand and I am frightened of weaving the spiders web. Connecting what's inside to the outside. The me you have to carry.

Sorry can never be a big enough word. It is not even the right word any more. The right words are 'yes'. ' I will'. 'I want to'. ' I can.' I hope they are coming. I hope that when they arrive I fully believe in them and inhabit them until there is no other way of being. That we will move forward and away from this. Delete those messages and never hear them spoken again.

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And this is a letter to you. The person who has hurt me so much. Who never sees me. Touches me. Acknowledges the pain inside me. The pain on me. You are the one who has to read these words. These stories I have been collecting. The unhappiness. The anger within each syllable is aimed at you. Not in malice or anger but in love and betrayal. I loved you and you never loved me back. It makes me angry that I can't hate you and forget you. Move on as you have done. Forget. Forget. Repress. Deny. Abolish. But I am not as cold as that. Not like you. It is that warmth which makes me special. It is such a loss you fail to see what I have given you.

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And a ps to my SS friends - I am sorry if I can't reciprocate and read your entries as quickly as I might. I am still euphemisitcally in the 'teach hut' and only have 20 mins of PC time a day..home on Tuesday though..thanks for your visits.. Jae

Source

I am in a teach hut, not a beach hut.

The waves are stronglifting me up.

Soon I will feel the water on my feet

and the sun willmake me smile...

or at least those tiny little shells of compounds

will soak into my head

and raise my hair again

Away in the Head

Hello to all my Sunday Scribbling friends.. I feel a little lost without you but am unfortunately out of action due to some health problems..I hope to be up and typing as soon as my poor old head gets it together again..

Look forward to rejoining you all
Jae x

Me

When I arrived at midnight I said to her ‘I am not a bad person’. She replied, ‘I never thought you were. You are just lost.’

And so I stand at the counter piercing holes in the cellophane of my ready meal. It is now 4’O Clock on a different day. But the same day. It is always the same day. I am not hungry. I never am. Not for food. The noise stabs into the silence of this beige room. My fingers shake around the knife. Maybe this will be the last bite of reheated cauliflower. The last taste of dried carrot. If only the shop would stop selling these small boxes of sadness. I keep opening them up hoping to find something. But there is nothing. You will never leap out of a 10cm box.

I exist in this slow world. I look at the words I have attached to the fridge. A few black lines that tether me to something other than this beige food. A few reasons to go back to the shop. To keep on. But they hardly drown the silence. They can’t take away the crushing weight in my head. Sitting. Looking at my hands. So strange. A tangle of yesterdays and nothingness. Sheer nothingness eating at me. My lips make no noise as I try to call out. I grind my teeth over my nails to try and fill myself up.

I would like to make a sound. I try to summon it up as I walk. When I wear out another pair of shoes. Endlessly moving, trying to find the right words. Any words. The right pair of hands. Any pair of hands. The timer counts down on the oven. Twenty-five minutes. I watch the dial - Age going up. Time going down. But it is still too much. I cannot bear to wait. Why wait for something you do not want. I eat the food cold. It hardly matters. What is warmth? It is so hard to find amongst the aisles of a supermarket. Standing in a queue with strangers. Real people. Something I can never be. Replicant. Imposter. Bad, bad, bad.

I can barely swallow. I cannot taste because I know I will never be found. Me. The scraps of congealing potato tossed in the black bag. Lost. This is the way of me now. This is the way of me forever.

Life Swap

I think about my life. When I am alone in front of the TV. Where I have been. What I have done. The 6am bus rides in a city half a world away from where I was comfortable. The burnt out buildings and the gun shots. The pink ski jacket. You. The person who died in the toilets several months after I crept away with two bags and a discharge letter.

I sent you letters. Photos of where I came from. I did not tell you that I was sleeping on the ground wrapped in a sleeping bag, bottle of cooking brandy in my hands. I tried calling your house as soon as I had a phone again. A man picked up. I knew you had gone but I needed to hear. He said ‘I hope you find your friend’. And I did. In the newspaper. Your age. Occupation. The place where you were being buried.

I am static now. Un-tuned. The TV running blue in the background. The days crossed off in the diary. Forcing my eyes shut in bed. Next year it will be different. Next year I will start living. But the years, decades, come and go. My body the only barometer of each passing day.

I populate my mind with people I encounter. As if they could measure up to you. I line them up and count them. Like a collection of dolls. I order them. But I do not get close. In some ways these people are perfect. They cannot hurt me by leaving. I cannot hurt them when I throw them away; when I become tired of watching myself play in the glass mirrors of their eyes. Their passing merits no line in a paper. They are forgotten as easily as last night’s beans.

But they are not quite enough. These dialogues and plays. I don’t like to think of you lying there behind that door. In the water and filth. Bitten lip. Blown eyes. Body slack as rags. I wonder if you know that I wished more for you. That I knew what you were thinking. I knew where you wanted to be as soon as you showed me your house and the perfect baby-pink bed with the turned down quilt and toys. The picture on the side table. You grinning with a rifle in your hand.

We are both soft in our destruction. Confused. Wishing that the concrete we fall on will in someway cherish us and love us as we deserve to be loved. I think of you as time passes. How your world was really not so different after all. That I could have chosen to live there. As much as I could choose to live here.

Unlike you, I do not have the courage to stop. There is some inexplicable courage to keep trying; as annoying and disturbing as this infernal transmission buzzing in my living room. It never ends. It is a persistent nudge in my ribs. The bony old elbow of life leaving its bruises. But I would not change things. I would not swap who I am. If I did, I would lose you forever.

Birth

The baby lies in the plastic crib. All jerky arms and purple feet. It is alive but not a person yet. A blank page on which to write the story. In the first moments of its life the baby can become anyone and anything. It is as yet unnamed. Unclaimed. Nothing more than bones and skin.

The people who made the baby carry it home. They have already begun to fill the page. They write in invisible ink so no-one else can see.

They think the baby needs nothing more than milk. But the baby yearns for more. So much more. The baby learns the things that other babies learn. It can walk and speak. They all think the baby is ok. They do not listen to the words that it has learnt. What it is trying to say. They do not see that is not walking but running. So many years trying to find the warmth of a blanket. The tenderness of a loving kiss.

The baby is alone. Untouched yet consumed by the hands that carried it home. All those invisible words scratched upon it.

The baby wants to repel its beginning but knows it will follow her until the end. The baby tries to grow. There are times when it feels proud and strong. But it is hard for the baby to find joy in its birth. To feel anything more than a heavy-weight of bones and skin.

The baby lies in the bed now. All jerky arms and purple feet. The story written on it. What they did not do. How it needed love. How it needed them.

Superhero

The sign by the side of the road says 'tiredness kills take a break.' I smile to myself. It sometimes feels as if the story is written around me. My head is so heavy that my chin keeps dropping to my chest. It has been such a long time since I have rested. The steady spin of the tyres lulls me into a half-sleep. I like the feeling of moving. It is not like being trapped in that bed. I felt so alone there. So dead. My head saw pictures. Whirling purple faces. Like a painting by Vincent. I remember my eyes were like lead weights impossible to keep open. The sleep was so thick I thought I was gone for hours. At some point my brain worked out I had only been gone for a minute at a time. But each minute felt like an hour. I knew from looking at the clock on the wall. It was the same standard-issue government clock that had been in my school - except there I wanted time to stand still. Back in that bed of traps the minutes even seemed to go backwards. Like I had to suffer them over and over again.

I lost almost two days like that. When I awoke I saw their looks. Disdain. Revulsion. You filthy girl. Lying on the pavement. Words scrawled on you. You are nothing. Nothing. I shook. My god what have I done. What happened to that little girl with the exercise books covered in rainbows and clouds. I couldn't hold the cup they placed in front of me. I couldn't reach for my things. I couldn't prove who I was. For two days I was the story they wrote for me.

I know I am more than the story. Somwhere in there is the light that brought me this far. I can be superman and wipe away the dust. Spark up the flame. Some moments I believe that. I did on the day I drove away. But then there are so many things I forget. The sign posts are cryptic. They give clues but they do not tell the whole story. How I crossed the road. How I took the pen in my hands and wrote upon myself. Some kind of prayer. Some kind of curse.

I look down at my dirty hands on the wheel. The dried blood. I am glad I had the courage to stop it. To see him one last time. Perhaps now I can close my eyes.

Mess

The tube of fine chocolate has remained un-opened in the cupboard for many months. I shake as I break the seal. This is my will folding. I peel open each individual chocolate disc and lay them on the counter. My mouth fills with saliva. How I have yearned for the silky fine cocoa to burst on my tongue. How I have praised myself for my resolve. Each night sitting in the chair looking at the little red clock, not touching them. Resisting. Repelling. Repressing. The first disc is like heaven. I am slow. Mindful. It melts. I sigh out loud. Look around the empty room guiltily. Someone will catch me being nice to myself. Eating more than bread and beans. I tell them I find no pleasure and here I am standing at the counter slipping chocolate in my mouth. Faster and faster. Time spins and I am holding the last piece of chocolate. Now I feel sick and remorseful. On the counter is an empty tube and a pile of silver foil. I hastily put them in the bin bag. Seal it up. Place it outside the kitchen door. That irks me and I have to lock it outside the front door. I have to get rid of it. Forget it. The light fades. The chocolate settles heavily in my stomach. I groan as I drop the curtains then settle myself back into my chair of waiting. Even there I find it hard to rest. To live with the empty tube and silver foil of life. I move constantly. Drum my fingers. Twitch my toes. Smack my lips. Yet I am as motionless as a headstone. Rigid. Stuck in the ground. But not secure. Just scarcely hiding buried bones of regret and wasted time.

I switch off the lights. Say goodnight to the house and feel ok. The bag is outside. There is mess in it. But at least I have marked my birthday with a fleeting amount of pleasure.

Mantra

He tended her leaves with warm water and a clean muslin cloth. He had watched her grow from a small mass of green and brown into the array of healthy leaves before him. He called her Persephone. He placed her in the bathroom where the steam soaked into her dry stems and warmed her from inside. Forced life up into the veins and capillaries that stretched out into her leafy fingers.

He never wanted something living in his flat. It was too much commitment and he couldn’t bear the mess and disruption. The asymmetry. His sister brought the little stump of life into the lounge when he was locked away in the underworld. She left a card by the pot. It said ‘Enjoy Life’. His sister knew that too many words were pointless. They didn’t touch him. She never came when he was at home. She couldn’t bear to watch him disappear any more.

He held Persephone over the bin many times. Resentful of her will to grow. He shouted and tossed her aside. Later he felt regret and cursing lifted her out of the dark, black bag because he knew she couldn’t find light there.

After a few weeks he began to accept her presence. Tolerate the persistence of life. She seemed to enjoy life more than him and he hated that. Yet he couldn’t help but care for her. Every day he sprinkled cool water into her tub. Tentatively began stroking her leaves. She got so big. He had to place her gently in new soil every year. He found some brightly painted dishes to put her in as the brown plastic bowls never seemed to befit her presence.

Slowly he began to love her. She made him smile. She made him feel warm. He wished he had the words to thank his sister.

In the library he had his head down and saw a dropped leaflet on the floor: ‘Plant Sale’. He went home and stroked the plant gently. His head was full of the need to speak. With a small pair of scissors he gently cut off a stem and a leaf and placed it in a bright container. He went unnoticed around the village hall with his clipping in an old shopping bag. When no one was watching he placed this small piece of Persephone on a battered wall-paper table. He did not look back at her. He knew she would reach the next person to need her. Carrying her mantra. ‘Enjoy Life’.

Recipe

What do I want? What do I want? She made her feet walk quickly to the supermarket. Today I will eat pea and ham soup and a crusty bread roll. The cashier smiled at the box of lemon cupcakes. A treat for the afternoon. Her words came across breezily. Did the cashier know it was a box of lies? That the lemon crème would be stuffed down so quickly it wouldn’t even taste. That there would be guilt. Then emptiness. An empty box sat in a rubbish bag. Another day tied up and deposited in the bin. She puzzled over the wastage. She was here. She left trails of debris. But it was hard to believe she was being.

In the afternoons she liked to walk for forty minutes. She took the same path everyday. Wore down the soles of her shoes. One day she saw eight ducklings. She watched them through the gate. Their eyes black and vital. Their feathers downy and soft. She wanted to put one in her pocket and feel its warmth. It was almost with happiness that she locked up the flat at 1pm and headed to the pond. On the fourth day there were five ducks. The sixth just one. She didn’t look up the next time she walked. She felt her throat stick with tears. She wished she didn’t have to keep going back but she couldn’t stop. Around and around she went. Carrying the sadness and inevitability.

She felt urgent in the queue at the chemist buying toothpaste. She wanted to shout to everyone. ‘Time is passing. It won’t stop. Can’t you see?’ But she smiled that sickly, unreadable smile and the checkout girl said ‘have a good day’. She rolled up the receipt in her fingers and left the shop thinking, I wish I knew how.

She turned another page in the TV guide. She tried to ignore the fact that she was calculating how many days she had sat in the same spot turning pages. Watching dates pass. At bed time she turned the page to the next day. Like turning down the bed sheets. Optimistic that a new day would come and she could make it better.

Underneath her pillow was the piece of paper with the other life written on it. She curled up in bed with the words crumpled in her hand and smiled. What I want is sun, laughter and a hand to hold.

Courage

It took a lot of courage to move herself but she knew she had to. These days were no longer something she could let slip by. It was grey when she took the first step. She stood down by the water and looked at the trucks going over the bridge. It was almost soothing to see how they were so evenly spaced. A mechanical ballet. Wheels gently rolling from one end to the other. Just the feint noise of their engines drifting in the breeze. It was easier to look right: at the new bridge and the cars. She could imagine it as any bridge in any town. Anywhere she didn’t really know. If she looked left she saw the old bridge with six tired arches. The hills. The industrial estate. The history. Her history. Its strange how home quickly fades away. How there’s eventually no place that means anything to you. She tries not to feel sad when people she played with as a child choose not to recognise her bothered features in the queue at the library. She knows she embarrasses them. How she is stuck like wax to her sadness. She taps her fingers on the books and pretends to read the covers. So many hours to fill. Checking out books she’ll never read. They are never enough. Other people’s words. Though she tries to assimilate them. Learn from them. No words seem to compare to the words inside her. The story she wants to scrawl. The downward curve of her lips and eyes. All the days spent clutching herself in the silent flat. The wasted hours ticking by. Hour by hour. Truck by truck over the road. There were people who tried to reach her. Hold out a line. But it was never long enough. Never good enough. It was not what she wanted. What she wanted. Who she wanted was very far away. In the places outside this town. Places she had dreamt of but had long since left behind. The beach. The red jeep. The fading sunset and her children sleepy in the back seat. That was where she had to go back to. The sun inside her head.

The cold of the morning made her nose drip and she wiped it on a battered old tissue. She looked up at the bridge. Put her chin in the air. Today she would take a ride in one of those trucks. It didn’t matter where. Anywhere was better than this. She had to move again. She had to get back on the road. With every ounce of bravery she could muster she moved her leaking shoes towards the exit ramp. Neither looking left or right. Just straight ahead into the rising light.

Event

It was no great event. Her disappearance. No line in the paper. No police report. She went to a different town. Cut her hair off. Threw away her driving license. The photo in her wallet. Sat in the park unnamed. Unnameable. Looked at people. Do you even know I am disappeared? They didn’t. They walked by. She looked ordinary enough. From the outside. But the hands in her pocket shook. Itched. That feeling of not belonging. Of desperately trying to be. It scared her. That she could be behind the locked door of her nowhere flat for days and nobody would know. She left the curtains drawn. In the sun. In the day. She lay on the floor of the empty room looking at the ceiling. There was no grid reference to mark her existence. No shining arrow. There was no way of knowing where she was. If she was. She shouted out in her sleep. ‘Who am I?’ There was nobody to hear. Nobody to put an arm around her shoulder and say you are you. You are here. You are somebody. Just roll over in the dark room on her sore arms. Trying to push away the terrible things in her sore head. And the dizziness. The dizziness never went away. Nobody even guessed. She walked for mile after meaningless mile in a perfect straight line. She was passing out inside but she smiled at people. Cooed at babies and puppies. Looked at signs. Pressed the crossing light. She tried to cry behind the curtain because she knew that all those years of learning to fit in had made her more remote. You have to transmit the right signs and signals to show you are in trouble. Shoot your problems into the sky like a distress flare and hope for help to come. She wanted to tell people that it was a mistake. That she was not strong. That she was scared. Vulnerable. Human. She became this to survive. To survive them. I had to. I had to. If I had not been strong they would have known they had killed me. I am reaching out to you to tell you of my murder. But I do it in silence. I do it with no expression of remorse. I do it with no tears. No words.
She lies on the floor. She has made herself untouchable. Yet all she wants is to be touched. She wants to be at an event where people laugh and cheer and wish her to be.

Dinner

Her packed lunch was the smallest container in the hall. She liked the symmetry of the square sandwiches in one corner and the chocolate biscuit in the other. There were no words passed in the house but the sandwiches screamed.

Cucumber sandwiches. Things were tight but could have been worse.

Jam. That sick feeling before she left school at 3pm.

Out of date crisps and a banana and the best thing to do was to curl up on top of the shoe box in the hall and wrap the coats over her body.

She screamed at the table. She hated to see her father eat. Hated the sounds he made with his mouth. He screamed back. I should eat in the shed. The girl thought yes you should. But instead she was removed from the table and sat in the lounge on her own for ten years. Watching TV and eating mushroom omelettes and packet rice.

The father left the house. The mother stopped eating. Gave the girl sickly cakes which she flushed down the toilet in the dark empty house. The girl knew they were not given in love. They were the things the mother refused to eat because they would make her fat. She gave them to the girl instead. To make her fat and unlovable. The girl no longer had a lunch box. She carried a small amount of food in a plastic bag. Up and down the hill to school.

The mother got cross when the girl tried to make herself dinner. Old lasagne from the freezer which she put in the microwave. The mother didn’t like the smell. Didn’t like the mess. The girl tried to eat it hidden behind the end of her bed. She was so nervous it fell off her fork and onto the floor. The mother shouted. You shouldn’t have food in your bedroom. Think about the starving children. The mother’s shouting made no sense. The girl couldn’t swallow and threw away the food. She doesn’t remember what she ate instead.

The girl left the house and demanded expensive food. A full fridge. It made her upset if there was nothing to eat. She ate everything in the cupboard when no one was looking. First she took it to the new school and ate it in the toilets. Then she stayed in the new house all day with the curtains drawn. It made her sweat to buy food. Everybody will think I am greedy. So she waited for the food to be bought for her. Chocolate spread. Marshmallow. Fruit juice.

The girl went very far away. Every place she went dinner was hard to understand. She lives in a house near the first house now. Many things have happened. She is old. As old as the mother who shouted at her for eating.

The girl does her own shopping. She looks at the food. It makes her dizzy to choose. All the colours on the shelf. Sometimes she chooses disgusting foods because she believes they are what she deserves. She imagines how things will taste. She can enjoy the melt of ice cream on her tongue in the summer and the warmth of hot chocolate in her throat in the winter. She still sits alone. Five o’clock in front of the TV. No ugly noises of other people eating to distract her. But, to forget the mother, she serves herself dinner every day.

Wonder

It sits on the shelf screaming quietly. Drink me. Drink me. The label peeled off. The expiry date long since passed. No traces left of what was there before. In this small plastic pot. I can see it from every spot in the room. When she speaks on the phone I look at it. My mouth smiles but my eyes are hypnotised by this tiny wonder I have created. My little mixture of fool’s gold. Those small curves of frailty and strength.

It is not the first pot. The first pot was taken away. ‘I believe you have something in your bag,’ she said. I handed it over dumbly. If I didn’t she would have asked the men outside to take it from me. I would rather hand over what I know I will lose. Stay in control. Smile. Grin. Look at your shoes. Give willingly. You can make another pot. Keep it at home on the shelf. Full to the brim with Tyler’s potion.

They took my shoes off and watched me hit my head on the floor. Up and down. Smile. Wave. Drown. Think of the pot. Count down the days. Go home. Fill it gently. Love it. Look at it. Caress it. Know that it is there. Just in case. It calls out in the night. When it is quiet. When the absolute strain of being bursts your ears and you have to force your limbs to stay still on the bed. You cannot trust what you do at night when there is no one to empty your bag or shake away the dust. It sings from the shelf. You can make it a reality. You can. You can. Just reach out. Just change what is. What will be. But you wait. Open eyed until morning. Eat toast with the pot on the table. Hold the bread in one hand and chew. Shake the tiny beads with the other and swallow. Imagine no more need for language. Words. Questions.

The pot rests on the shelf. It is always there. In the back of my mind. In my bag. In my hand. It never allows me to be still. This is the container that holds my future. Which has drawn the outline of my body. It is the filth that defines me. A seething blackness which has brought wonder to my world.

The Dead Line

The body lies still
in this blue place.
The ebb and flow of breath
has gone.

The body lays disconnected.
All faded bruises and echoes.
Words left on pages,
Torn from books.

The body is granite.
It is at once leaden and weightless,
barely leaving a mark on the white cotton.

The body thinks to itself that this
is heaven and smiles inside.
It no longer has to fight electric pulse.
For once there is silence. Stillness.

The body has vague memories of being moved.
The weight of strange hands on
hips and thighs.
Blankets being squared around it,
Parcelled in.

People outside the body wait for the blackness to lift.
The head to lift.
The lungs to fill.

The body wants to remain
deep blue and sunken.
It tries to fight the current.
It pretends to be static
but they prise open its eyes
like reluctant hinges.

Wake up. Wake up.

The body hates this.
Returning to the main grid.
Joining the line that picks up the pulse.

The body beats again.
The body fights.

The body turns pink and fades from blue.

Mentor

He held the sleeve in the air. A shadow of her broken arms. So small. His fingers held them softly. As if he was holding her up. Like a puppet.

You can’t stay here.

I know she said, looking at her feet. It was the only place she wanted to be. It was the only place she felt safe. He saw her falling. Turning grey. His voice turned softer. Imploring.

If I could come to your house and take it away I would.

Then why don’t you.

You know why.

She knew it was absolute that he could never see her. Where she was. That all of this was false and already spoken. But she couldn’t stop.

Please. Just come. She said it over and over. Tiny little words she hoped would eat into him.

I’m not the right one. You can’t trust me.

But you are. You don’t see but it all led to this. This time. This place. It is the next evolution. I saw the sign. In the shop. And I saw the people on their knees in the rain. They were saying the words. The right words and they had a sign beside them too. It said healing. I knew then I had to find you. I knew where I had to go.

There are no signs. You came to me because you need an answer. Any answer. But I can’t help you.

Then why did you let me in? Why did you open your door?

I couldn’t leave you in the dark. In the rain. You’re clothes are wet.

Yes you could. You have done.

What do you mean?

I’ve been here before. Many times. It’s just that I knocked last night.

He swallowed. He looked at her. Perhaps she was capable of more than he’d imagined. Perhaps she was not as easy to acquiesce as the others who came to his door in the night. The one’s he led there and turned away. She was different. She was trying to get him to follow her. Bend to her will. He didn’t like it that she never cried. That she found him first.

He handed back her shirt and she lifted it over her head with a defiant little smile revelling in the discomfort of the wet. She went back out on the road alone. He was not the guide she had expected him to be.

Alchemy

I carry the white stuff in an empty plastic pot. It never leaves my pocket or the secret place in my bag. I walk around the shops with a sickly smile painted on my face. I drink coffee and console the girl behind the counter whose granny died. I do the right thing. I always do the right thing. I smile at scrubbed up couples with their children who play and shout and pierce my ears. But under the table I ram my hands in my jeans to stop them doing what they really want to do. Never let anyone see the crackles of disorder inside. I go to the hairdresser and shake. I cannot comprehend the image before me. Some stranger with a lopsided face. An eye that droops. A thousand lines of story behind and ahead. I have to keep moving my feet to quell the energy. The sparks of fire inside. The black silky cape moves up and down over my knees. The hairdresser pretends not to notice but asks if I’m ok. I smile and say yes. I have to get out. I have to get out. I ride the bus. I move. I can never be still. At rest. I am like bubbling acid in a vile. I bounce around jumping off the heat inside. I walk past places I think you might be. I believe you are in every car. I hope you will see me. I want those words you gave me back. I need to know somebody believes. You never doubted. You never rejected my terror. You could see the holes inside. The emptiness. You believed. I crave to be back in your room. I crave to be under your hands. When the silence descends and leaves me gripping my stomach in the bathroom I try to imagine you are there. Helping me. But the sirens rattle off the windows and I know I am truly alone. Not one person knows where I am. No one knows I am a woman disappeared. Not really here. Nothing more than a chemical trace. A trail of clues. Not quite DNA. Not quite human. Not quite alive. But doggedly breathing. Pumping blood. I sometimes believe I am on that bed. That I never walked away. I am still connected to that tube. Blue. Still. Turned off. At rest.

If I mix the white stuff with water it will be transformed by alchemy into a sticky potion. It will eat its way through the pot into my hands. Crying drink me. Drink me. If I answer its cries I will no longer have to struggle for words. I will not have to do the right thing. I will be excused. Allowed finally to rest in my own silence. Close my eyes and be. I finger the pot. I caress it. I love it. It is mine. My reality burning a hole in my pocket. I hit my head in the kitchen. I hate this place. I hate this place. Please take me home.

Demands

She put her arm around my shoulder and said ‘I think you’ll be ok here’. It was the perfect thing to say. The perfect thing to do. But as I looked out the window I couldn’t stop myself missing the garage with the mattress on the floor. The place with the man who drove his motorcycle into a brick wall. Who had a steel plate hammered into his head. You could feel the rivets when you tried to stroke away his anger. Tried to stop him screaming. Such a long time ago. So many places that weren’t really rooms in between. All part of the rivets of flesh on my face. The peaks and troughs of bad days and good days. All history really. Nothing of importance. Still, I am uneasy seeing it in the reflection of the glass and want to move backwards. It will never leave me. Unlike him. These patterns under my fingertips will never really fade with time.

It is unfathomable they say that I find this room so terrifying. That I need someone to walk me through the door. There is nothing here to scare me or keep me awake. I smile. I agree it is wonderful. Behind the smile I miss the terror. There is a beautiful symmetry to living in fear. A point at which your existence is clarified and refined. It is not right to say that. To admit that the normal things are the most demanding. The most terrifying. Eating. Sleeping. Keeping warm. It is hard to know how to do these things when they have never been done before.

The new carpet smell is not a comfort. The weight of my foot in the thick fabric is hard to tolerate. I walk gingerly. Not often. I tiptoe around this new place with the lights off. Stretch out my toes to reach the islands of floor that are not covered in fabric. This feeling on my skin is as unknown to me as walking barefoot on the beach. It is too pleasing. It starts me twitching. The nods and noises of paranoia that have kept me company. I worry that I will get lost here. Being nothing in particular. Having no place else to go. I tell myself it is only a pause. A motorcycle stopping not crashing. A quiet room. A window to look out of. An empty wall upon which to write the new story. She has started it for me. With her kindness and careful words. And so when I shut the front door and am all alone I know how to thank her. I put the blue necklace with the dead butterfly in a metal box under the bed. And I fall asleep without dreaming.