Candy Veins

I throw away my name like candy on a path.
It means nothing.

I ate through my veins trying to find you.
That is what is real.

You listened to me on the phone.
You thought I spoke nicely.

Now I rarely speak at all.
And I am not nice.

Except I am -
Nice.

The man in the shop saw.
He said you are far too nice.
To do this.
To be this.

He filled my day.
I carried home the blue package with his words wrapped around it like a bow.

Maybe there are still riches left inside.
No quite buried in the dirt. The veins. The powder.

It is hard to wash the dirt off.
It lingers.
Persuasive.
Unyeilding.
Unforgiving.

There are people who are meant to wipe it away but they dare not touch.
Because I am not nice.
Because if they touch me my dirt might follow them home.

I might become real.

To you I will always be the same person.
Trapped in amber.
The one whose name you read out loud.

What a fine surname you said.
And I felt so happy you saw me.
My hair. My smile. My clean, white shoes.

You do not know that my veins are gone.
That my face is no longer a reflection of yours.

That it is not even the face of the old name.

I trap my dirt in a dustpan.
Collect the candy.
Mop the path.

It is so very tiring sweeping up.
The exhaustion so loud it eats through me too.

On Sunday you come back.
I stick you on the cupboard alongside the five reasons.
You are number six.
Your smile gets me through to Monday.

I look at you there.

A cool glass of lemonade waiting by the side of this dirty path.

Like candy.
Like veins.
I still love you.

Ruth

The new shop opened on the seventh of February.
I still haven’t been.
Not even near.

It has an escalator.
I would like to ride it.

To go up and down.
To see the beans from above and below.
The neat rows of cans like apostles on the shelf.

Instead I go back to the place with stories in the windows and sit.

A man comes in.
He smiles at me and my feet twitch.
But I don’t mind him being there.
He has his shopping beside him too.

He sits in the place that is usually filled by Alice or Felder or you.

I look at the back of his head.
His shoulders.
A real body filling up the space in front of me.

How strange.
How strange that I stay.

Then I remember.
The girl who puts sweeteners in her spearmint tea is called Ruth.
Ruth.

I go around this empty town like Ruth.
Gleaning.
Pulling up the roots of names and faces.
Placing them in shelves and rows.
Riding up and down the memories and words.

There are people here.
People who become the stories in the window.

It calms me.
To know that they will return to the same table.
Order the same drink.
Chew the same invisible food.

The man gets up to leave.
It’s a very special place he says
And I smile and say
Yes. It is. Very special.

It is hard to hear my voice.
To share the words out loud.

But as he leaves I know he has given me
A penny’s worth of kindness and love for the day.

When The TV Died

Somebody I know is behind me.
I can feel them.
I walk with hectic feet to get away.

Like tweaker guy.
He still walks upstairs with hectic feet.
And wears mirrored sunglasses in the rain.

Like ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’.
Except he only falls from upstairs.

We all ran out onto the landing the day the TV died.
A volley of panic and confusion.

He told me he watches travel shows.
He goes around the world up there.
No wonder I can hear him.

He wears out the carpet.
He wears out me.

I hate noise.
But am lost without the static.
There is nothing to drown out the headache.

I sit in the chair.
A little dual playing out in my head.

What do I want.

It is too much to wait for the deciding shot.

I trim off little pieces of myself and wash them down the sink.
Clip. Clip. Clip.
The sound of my decomposition.

I cannot stand the smell at night.
I cannot stand to look.

And yet I collect a thousand pictures and stare.

Look how pretty.
Look how clever.

So clever my fingers can trace out different powders in the dark.

Know the difference between shapes that seem identical.
Know the difference between colours.
Know how each one will taste just by smelling the cloud which erupts on the snap.

It is funny how each little difference has led me to this one place

This one place where every thought leads to the same feeling.
Where there are a thousand words and only one meaning.

I think about this.
When the TV gets cold.

I dare you to be as pretty as me.
As clever as me.

Try it once.
Multiply by 365. By 17.
Then tell me it’s ok.

Tell me you can breathe and swallow and think about the world.

Tell me that you do not want to rest in the static and dust.

Tell me if there is anything left at all.

The Pain of Wearing Blue

I choose a pale blue coat.
I carry it home nervously.

There has to be one coat that doesn’t end up in a green carrier bag with my shoes.

My fingers sweat around the handles of the plastic bag.

I am uncomfortable with this.
The colour.
The weight.
Cool light cotton.

I wear it.
In the afternoon.
When the sun is out.

I tug at the hems.
Plunge my hands into the tiny pockets.
Wish for it to turn black.

I walk fast through the car park.
To avoid being seen.

I could cry.
I do not like how this coat feels.

I take it off when I get home.
I feel sick.
Stupid.

I hunt in the rubbish bin for the receipt but it is covered in jam and tea.
I cannot take this decision back.

I sit down.
Try to ignore it.
But it stares at me from its hook in the hall.
Like a pin prick.
But not so nice.

I hate this coat.

I fill up black bags.
Make space for this new mistake.

Each piece of clothes falls into the bag like a piece of time lost.
The sound of my decompensation.
Like the nail clippings in the chiropody clinic falling in the tray.
Making me heave and wake up.

I file away this blue coat.
Settle my arms and bloated body into familiar black sleeves.
To hide is to be free.

The blue coat will remain untouched.

It will not fall into a green carrier bag with my shoes.

Jesus and The Onions

Jesus rides to the vegetable store on his mobility scooter.

He asks the lady for two onions and she puts them in the carrier bag on the back of his chair.

I smile.
How people fall.

He’s not ‘the’ Jesus.
The one from the book and the church.

But he smells strange as I walk past.

Dried blood. Incense. Smoke.

It carries on the breeze.
Tickles my nose.

I leave Jesus and hope he gets a good price for the onions.

The sky is blue today.
My boots are heavy and brown.
I drag them around the path.

How much easier it is to fall.
Weighed down by remembering and confessions.

The policeman looks over his shoulder as I cross the road.
The marks on my neck
Heavy like my boots.

I bang my head on the chiropody clinic window.
There’s nothing wrong with my feet.
But there’s no place left to send me.

I rock on my heels and rub the polish off my fingers.

It is better because there is nothing left to scream for.

Inside it is not mellow. Buttery.
It is hard knots, falling, drowning.

Small stones disappearing in the night.
Our faces getting older.

I try not to catch a glimpse of myself.

In the chiropody room door.
The vegetable shop window.
The mirrors on Jesus’s scooter.

That smell. It comes home with me.

Dried blood. Incense. Smoke.

It is not Jesus.
It is the raw onions weeping in my head.

Red Balloon

The balloon left without me.
It was so big.
The green silk flapped in the air and disappeared for ever.

I am stuck in this grey land.
My head leaking.

I catch it in red pen on my arms.
It does not wash off.

That makes me laugh.
I am the message.

I am telling you what is lost.
What I am planning.

You choose not to see.

I look around for the revolver.
The one you loaded and handed to me.

I miss it.
I miss you.

The light fades and the box rattles in the corner.
Empty teeth.
Crumbling bones.
Stained tongue.

I watch the fuses and pass the night.

The men come and go on the stairs.
They no longer scare me.
They cannot do any worse than what has been done before.

But it’s better.
That’s what they say.

Your hair is nice.

I do not tell them it is better because now I want nothing.

That my scalp is raw.

I chew and rock on the bathroom floor.
Back and forth. Back and forth.

Like the girl who puts sweeteners in her spearmint tea.
Who fills up pages in her little book.

At least she has something left to fill the hunger.

I look at my arms and measure my jaw with my fingers.

Can I build a balloon out of red words and spent bullets.

Prayer Card

The church has run out of holy water again.
I push my finger into the empty vessel
Trying to mop up the vestiges of good luck.

It is as dry as ash.

The supermarket never runs out of spirit.

I buy it in cans.

Vodka. Gin. Whiskey.
A splash of fizzy water.

I like the cans.
The colours of the words.
The bubbles of weddings and birthdays.

An accompaniment to life.
Not a casket full of liquor and pills.

I chat with the cashier
All very dainty.

I doubt she can imagine my bathroom.
The tiles. Kitchen paper. Lemon cleaner.

I am all mixed up in there.
But don’t sparkle like a spritzer.

The bigger bottles tantalize.
The fonts of despair.

I know if I touch them they will haunt me. Finish me.

‘Drink me, Drink me’

Impossible to refuse the only voice left.

I look around.
Trying to hear Alice.
Felder.
You.

But today is as empty as the church stoup.
There is no one left to put a penny in the bathroom door and fish me out.

My head sinks down and down into the cold and wet of my own exodus.

I let it fall like my prayer card dripping off the wall.

Euclid

I found your house.
The one on Euclid.

Someone sold it for you.
You wouldn’t have met her.
You wouldn’t have known how much the next people paid.

($169,000)

I look at the house.
Your house.
I see us walking up the drive.
Popcorn and wine.

Something unspoken.

You do not have a penny in your pocket.
You do not know that I have kept you in mine.
Treasured you and hated you.

You have become everyone since.
I find you in every place I look for myself.

I try and shake away your red hair and tiny body but all I have left is a thousand pictures.

They start with a purple bike and a bowl of strawberries.
Like a flip-book they measure a face lost.
Eyes in panic. Lips in question. A dialogue.

‘I can take you there.
But I cannot bring you back.’

I need to talk to you.
I need to say that it is not fair.
How I became the older one.

I drink hot chocolate and my throat aches.
The powder burnt the house again.
The fumes made me gag and bleed.
They leave me raw.

I have a terrible feeling that the explosion inside of me will blow up the rubbish bins that all the families use.

I stand by the window choking.
I must not hurt anybody else.

The eyes.
There is not much left in there.
They are so heavy and yet they cannot be closed.

If I close my eyes I might miss you.

I am telling you all these things I never said.
Between the wine and the popcorn.

When I find you there will be no need for words.

I will rest my head upon your shoulder
And finally I will sleep.

Felder Cross

I see his trousers.
The piss stain marking out the map of his world.
Why do I always have to feel the piss too.
Getting cold. Sticking to his skin.

The little smile of triumph on his face.

It’s like an affinity.
Like a hundred birds on the water and all I can see is the empty bottle bobbing around in the scum.
The light dancing off its corners like magic.

I keep my head down.
But I see the sign.

‘Flowers and Accessories for All Occasions’
Right next to the drive through for the big black cars.

I wonder if it’s true.
If one day I will receive a bouquet with ‘congratulations you’re still alive’

I think about buying some red and yellow petals.
But remember I cannot tolerate colour.
Not even in my food.
It makes me fidget.

It makes me screw up the pictures you sent and throw them in the black bag.
The endless bags which I dispose of without mention.

When it is dark again I dare to reclaim the broken pictures.
I iron them on the kitchen counter.
Sobbing.
I cannot lose any part of you.

I iron the creases out with all the care and love left inside of me.
The smell of melting ink makes my nose drip.

I make it to the building where I have to be today.
I sit in the chair but I can’t remember where I am.

I leave and I am met by a boy called Felder Cross.
He has the most magnificent face.
And he says to me with the sun arcing his hair –

Remember god is mindful of you too.