Safe

Today was a landmark day. I took my coat off in the café. Cut my bacon and sausages wearing nothing but a T-Shirt and a resolute gaze.

I don’t know quite why it happened. It was hot. I felt sick. My knife and fork slipped in my sweaty fingers. The unruly tines flicked beans and tomato into my hair. It made me want to cry.

It took me a while. Working out the thought. Working out the room. Who would feint. Who would laugh. Who would stare.

Then a revelation. Nobody is interested in me. My body. The tapestry of my flesh. Pale. Knotted. Exiled. Draped in so many tangled up stories.

Why should I struggle with my baked beans.

Maybe if I can easily scoop my beans from plate to mouth I will be able to swallow 335 more days. I will stand on my feet as proud as this sausage poking up from the plate.

I heard her voice. You’re a good kid. And I felt safe.

I shimmied out of my navy, woollen sleeves.

I want to see what it is like to stick my naked elbows up to the world. I want to see what it feels like to undress the disease that lingers upstairs.

It was a hesitant step of defiance and progress. My left side neatly disguised by the wall. My right partially wrapped. But still, for the first time in fifteen years I allowed myself to be seen.

The Penny

J. Janky. J.

Sits in the church with a bag full of groceries. So tired. Can’t eat but have to buy food. Keep going. Keep carrying a bag. Bags are for life these days.

The organ grinds out a dirge. Like a lullaby of hopelessness. You can’t go on like this. You can’t go on like this. But my ears are too tired to listen. They just pick out the thumping fingers. The slaps of reality. The punches of despair.

If only I could pick out the candle again. But it’s hard to see. Way back here near the big wooden cross with the collection hole. It must be hard to empty. I wonder if it has metal reservoirs inside. Like the penny machines in the arcade.

What prize do you win if your penny hits the feet of Jesus? Eternal salvation. That would be nice.

They hurt me. Somehow I can’t rustle up a little conniption to go with my digestive biscuits.

There's always someone waiting in the vestry ready to rip off the layers of effort. It is no longer a surprise.

My wounds are left open. Raging. Raw. Skin.

My hand is blue. My fingers swollen. Not from the effort of praying. Just trying to be J.

All that effort. All that time spent hanging over the railings for nothing. Absolutely nothing. A piece of butchery. A body unrecognisable and ruined.

My heart works hard. It beats twice as fast as before the powder.

Mathematically this leaves me with less time to fill. I scooch along the pew. Lift myself up on aching legs. I trudge to my house with my biscuits and milk.

There can’t be much longer.

Please let my penny fall to the feet of Jesus.

Treadmill

This descent is so slow.

There is a heart-shaped puddle in the car park. I believe it brings me closer to you as I walk through it with my eyes cast down.

I never look up. To look up is to acknowledge this place. This time. This feeling that I can never kill. However much I try.

They told me I talked about her. How we ate popcorn for three days. How she ran on a treadmill and died in a toilet. I wonder what happened to her dogs. How long they waited in the cage she kept them in, in her basement.

She loved them. She just couldn’t let them love her.

Maybe now they are being stroked.

Maybe now she has stopped running over the same spot. Over and over until not even the popcorn rests in her stomach juices. Pure acid eating away at all that is inside her. And there was a lot. Underneath the revolver in the kitchen drawer and the pink-kitty shower curtain.

I was there with her.
It’s all such a dream.
Surreal isn’t half of the sandwich.
It should have been me.
But the police came.
Someone in big boots always comes.

I can’t find words. I can’t find what is inside. I just know I lost her. And she was me.

Eternity

I lean over the stair well. Thinking. My dirty pyjamas gripping my legs. Like a tether. Or a float. I’m undecided which. I had to find some place quiet. Someplace where my thoughts couldn’t find me. But there is never a true place of hiding. People find every corner you try to disappear in.

I am so confused. I say things. But my head does not remember the noises that come out of my mouth.

I think I will make a list. Of everything. Of every pain. Of every bad thought. Every photo. I will exhaust the list. Scrawl it. Scratch it. Screw it up. Then burn it. So it is gone for all eternity.

There is nothing left to do but write. Nobody believes my sounds.

I think there is something terribly wrong. But I go to the supermarket and always wear trousers so who could ever see.

I don’t understand the bad things I am looking for. The spaghetti in my head.

Two doors away from my bed was a place of peace and complete rest. Nothingness. Hollow being. I tried but couldn’t get there. That made me so angry. There are many angry words on my tongue waiting to erupt.

The lady who crashed her car talked and talked until by the third day she could laugh again. I would like that. Except I have not crashed a vehicle. Just myself.

Invisible

The bright white light shines brighter than any light.

I sit up at 2am chasing it. Hoping for it.

It shines on my head and I feel hands on me.

I know where I am. I see you.

I am not invisible.

If I wear something pink they won’t hurt me.
That’s what I think as I walk past ‘Balloon Surprise’. It has run out of business.

Congratulations it’s a girl. Happy Birthday. Silver Wedding Anniversary. All deflated now.

The covers make my skin warm and the smell on my neck becomes sticky and sweet. It filters up by nose. Stains my vest. I sniff at it. It intoxicates me.

The clock rests permanently at 12. There are gaps in the wiring. The sentences do not make sense.

I go to the church and see the angels pointing at the sky. I close my eyes in front of the candle.

Try to make it as bright as the bright white light that shines brighter than any light.

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PS Apologies if I cannot reply to any comments which you may kindly leave as promptly as usual - am off for surgery tomorrow (nothing serious) and may be out of typing action for a few days..Jae

The Telephone Exchange

A hat-trick of loss I think to myself.

I am the rabbit. Walking in the rain. Looking at the pole on the telephone exchange.

What’s another year. It’s all harmless.

I snap the plastic open and the powder falls out like snow. We once held hands and slipped on snow. My back goes moist at the thought. Every sensation is misfired. Backfired. Left unfired.

The electricity of life fails to flow. There is a dull click-click-click of the line powering down. Each day the beat grows dimmer and the town falls deeper into silence.

There are no calls left to pass through the exchange. This town is at the end of the line. All that is left is the powder. People take of it alone. Behind boarded up doors and grimy windows. It erases even the clicks. It leaves nothing in your ears but a muffled pulse. A sense that things will never end.

Powder killed life and yet the craving for it has become life. And it must be continued.

I remember the last call I made. Some years ago. I had forgotten language and made small yelps into the ear of a stranger.

They hung up.

People no longer look at each others lips. For fear they might have to exchange. And meet.

This is the new order.

No more words, sound or love.

I think perhaps they have kept the pole for moments exactly like this.

A Walk In The Park

I don’t want to wait an eternity.
I no longer have one to spare.

A glass of pure darkness waits on the side.

It has all the time in the world.
Its water never goes stale.
It never gets tired of waiting for me.

Don’t do anything stupid he said.
Who are you. My dad.
Roll over and go back to sleep.
I know what I am doing.

I am so stupid. So brilliantly stupid.

My feet creak over the kitchen floor. The sound makes me remember lying in the glass. Hair full of spaghetti. Sauce up my nose. Dry. Cold. Staler than puke. Rolling over. Wiping up another invisible catastrophe with the back of my hand. Licking the glass splinters from the tips of my fingers.

I can’t see the bowl through my spaghetti any more.

The glass shines in the dark.
The bad glass. The beautiful glass. The immaculate glass.
Its solution glimmers under the strip light. The one that never quite switches off.
The one you said you’d fix.
But it’s not even in the same house.
We’re not even in the same house.

I wipe the sweat off my hands.
It mixes up with the other stains.
My sweats.

I primp my face with my dirty hands.
Smooth the hair back over my ears.

It’s a walk in the park.
Like falling off a log.

If only the toaster didn’t illuminate everything.
It’s toasted a lot of bread.
Saved a lot of time.

Don’t do anything stupid.
Don’t worry I said.
I know what I’m doing.

My Limit

‘We will text you when you reach your limit’.

That’s what the sign says. I copy down the details.

I have three contacts now. This. The library and the doctor’s office.

I figure that I have all bases covered. What else do I need?

All eventualities have been sorted alphabetically and assigned to a speed dial key (which I never use).

There are no incoming calls of course. I only call out to find out times and make appointments; which I do not keep.

I cannot commit to taking out a library book. They taint the order of my plans. Three weeks is a long time. I could disappear. The book could be left unread on my table. Overdue charges adding up to more than I own.

I normally buy small books. I can throw them away tucked inside food wrappers. I feel guilty throwing out words. Somebody’s thoughts. But I just can’t keep them. I can’t keep anything.

I buy big books when I know I will be going to the ‘past the limit’ place. Then I pack my bag with my house brick full of pages. These books are the best way to count down the allocated ‘for my own safety’ hours.

I hate that place. I never go willingly. But it is a consequence of living in this sleep-walk. Like bad colouring. So fuzzy you can’t see the picture underneath.

When I think of running it is to avoid being there. Those people hurt me.

I think of how I would do it. Then I get caught in circles and cry because I would probably end up back there. There is no plausible solution. They would find me out. Trace me through my library card. One of three pieces of ID in my wallet. That. My bus pass and a grocery store loyalty card.

Last year I earnt a penny in points. Not enough to spend. I don’t shop there much. But it’s a piece of plastic that anchors me to a life of some description. A place. A date. A picture that looks nothing like me. Not now.

It’s amazing what you hold onto. When you know tomorrow you could have nothing.

I used to have credit cards and staff passes.

Nobody knew that I used the credit cards to buy toys and the staff passes to have a place to go at the weekends.

It is all so tireless.

I look at the phone. I wait for the text.

It will be a relief for someone to tell me that I have reached my limit; that I have done enough.

Progress

Everything inside screams run. It is the neatest solution. But I have to make progress. I have to move not run. Inside and outside. I look up place names. Paw over maps in the bookshop. Imagine new places to be. No place can be as bad as this place. To think I could have lost myself in the back of a truck or on a bench full of wrappers and chewed up food. It makes me shudder. The shudder is progress. Seeing the clear line of what my world has become is a step on the way to being.

There are little punches of defeat even two days in. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. Each day is an eternity. But when I look in the mirror I can see that time is running out. It drags on my bones. Makes my eyes inflate like cemetery balloons. Big. Black. Full of sorrow. Ready to pop.

I can’t believe I look like this. But it cannot be the year we lose each other. There can’t be a thousand more photos taken over the bathroom sink. There can’t be any more falling. I can’t push myself over. It is not what I really want. I am just too scared to try anything new.

On the first day of this new year my body ached. It told me how much it hurt and how sad it was to be lost for so long. I cried. I curled up in bed with the window open and listened to the birds. Even this I wouldn’t want to lose. Just being still and breathing. It is a treasure. You are still with me. I have my mind. There will be another year to come.

Over the next three hundred days the steps will be small. My feet are unused to anything bigger. They are trapped in the dirt of habit. It’s almost like a deception. How I will have to creep up and subdue this monster. Me.

You know too that is now or never. You wrote in the diary what to do each day. I will cherish those purple pages. I will walk the circuit backwards. I will do it at a different time. I will change what I eat. Wear different clothes.

After a hundred or so days these will become new ways and the vice-like grip of the monster will loosen. She may even disappear.

I will turn each page and build myself up like building blocks until one day I am strong. Then I will to walk to the station and leave.