The Behaviour of j

There are twelve left
Jettisoned in the bush
The one with prickles that nips my fingers
I feel safe
Plunging my hand back into this world
Of powder loose and shaken
Hollowed out candy dispensers
Moisture on my fingers
I go to the library and wipe my hands
I walk past the children’s books
whatyouaredoingiswrongyoulittleshit
The voice drowns out of me
Disappears as soon as my fingers start moving quickly mopping up what I need from the toilet floor
That ringing urgency in my ears
The essence of who I am
The me that took hold in that first blue toilet
The one when there were sixty
In a little velvet bag and one small bottle
How long and how suddenly
How cleverly this powder has mobbed me
Taken me down
Given me an existence bare but comfortable
Comfortable as thorns
I nod and smile
Wear an apology I need not make
This is who I am
I hold my hands together to stop them twitching to stop them pointing to the place the one where no one looks
This is how it will always be
This is the behaviour of j

Investigation

I have stopped looking
For this thing they call j
I lost her
On the bench
In the words
In the bed that smells like Borax.
I hug the powder snuggle the powder praise in finding it in my little red bush
i am so clever
the prickles nick the back of my hands the knuckles which belong to j the knuckles run along bumpy walls for so many years for so many years
I lick the red dribbles the moisture from the bag the little bag which keeps the powder safe for me how easy to hide how easy to disappear how easy to lose j
Everything leaves when nobody looks any more
My feet make no noise as I hustle through the leaves to the spot
where i am me and me and me
Tomorrow I will sit in the chair smile and nod
I will not hear the words thrown at me like Borax
I will not tell them that this case is closed
That I have stopped looking
For this thing that they call j.

Tissues. powder and white petals

I think my pocket is ringing
Apart from that I am coping admirably
Silently
My little catastrophe bags kept safe under bushes
Under fences
I try to say
That the misery is killing me
They say be thankful
I touch my face
My fingers shake
I still stand
I still stand
In the bathroom afterwards
So everything is fine
I am always fine fuckingfine
The advert on the television flies
They think I am smiling
Because I am coping
Admirably
In every place there is a bench
In every place there is a new low
I plunge my hand in the bin
Fish out the box
The napkin a thin defence from the dog shit
The vomit around the rim of the cheap vodka bottles
Drained dry
Hollow
Like the men on the bench
All of us finding some comfort in hitting a new low
Not much more left to lose
Not much more
I am full to the head
How lucky I am how fucking lucky
It only took thirty years to become nothing
I am so clever so fucking clever
My legs hold me up but I am not standing
I will answer the call in my pocket.
I smile.
The answer always rests there.
Tissues. powder and white petals.

Ten Birds

Ten is a bird you must not miss
I see them
On the grass
The cherry popping in my shoe ridges
Like blood exploding
This time will never end
But I say to the little girl
Do not lose tomorrow
She popped her balloons and ripped down the banner
This is no place to be 21
She left her name dangling from the ceiling
The colours are not as fine as the white rose
The candy floss time and plane bruises
They flap like old skin
Unscrubbed
Forgotten
Misplaced
I wonder who she thinks she is too
I
I
I am lost
A bird missed
A vote misled
Trapped in the mud of other people’s noise
Not quite wading
Not quite drowning
Not quite.
Ten is a bird you must not miss.
My story was long forgotten at seven.

Catastrophe Bag

I have my little bag
My quiet catastrophe
Time is slowing down
Watching me decide
Just take a couple
Like you always do
fuckupyoufuckup
Like he didn’t know
The apple juice and the little blue box
The smile
My own quiet solace
The comfort
Of cold benches damp skies little bags
Two won’t hurt
Five is a breeze
They slip down like vindication bitter and mine
I walk back
nobodyknowsnobodyknowsnobodyknows
My feet own an impetus to return that my head has yet to find
I write stay awake
And my eyes don’t shut
I have my little bag
My quiet catastrophe
I own it
I carry it
It is beautifully full of me.

Next Day

The white rose is hunched
Its petals dry and sore
Like cracked lips
Over licked
Nervously caressed by hungry tongues and bodies lost of warmth
I touch it gently
See the little bruises on its skin.
We are in the white place.
I walk the roads that lead to it.
I bring back light for the flower.
Space
Quiet
All that it needs to be.
I sit on the bench
Rest after I have tried these new roads.
The sky is bruised. gently.
Pink and orange.
Sliced up by the noses of planes.
Like birthday cakes and balloons.
A light swirl. movement.
Time mixed in a drum like candy floss.
The light is fading on the hill
I ring the bell
To go back into the building where I am.
Sixty days have passed in room twenty three
I fade and fall.
I am hunched like the white flower
Catching light
Watching the red marks fade on me.
It is not good
It is not bad
It is just the next day coming.

the little girl and the flower

The little girl found the white flower too
She touched it and it gifted her with a petal soft and warm
She held it next to her cigarette
Drank it in
For a moment it quelled the red pen the black eyes
Lines of emptiness.
We are not filled up
Not like the little girls downstairs
They are touched softly
like children
arms soothed shoulders rubbed hands held
warm soft petals of care of helping.
Nobody touches us.
We reach out in screams and bangs
We throw out edges hoping for a gentle return.
But no one can be mustered to smooth us
weknowweknow we have always known.
We are the ward where nobody visits
Where we calcify and rust.
We are thorns.
The rough soil that strangles the flower.
I am so thirsty.
Empty.
I hitch my jeans.
I am losing.
I am losing everything.
Soon the white flower will be empty too
All the petals spent.
Our hands will stay empty.
And the cold will be etched on us forever.

Omen

The white flower is dying.
Eaten up by the white rabbit.
I go onto the street.
There are people at my heels. At my head.
The lights don’t make me smile I never smile I can’t smile.
I take out my blue coat. The one with brown buttons.
Like the coat you wore. With blue buttons.
I hold it to my face. It is soft. It still smells of me.
Of pink skies and marshmallow clouds.
It smells of home.
When the lights turn to dust I walk back.
Not to the doors. To the lift that takes us up and down.
Which crushes us.
I want to wrap up my blue coat.
Fold it gently.
Place it back in my bag.
But the bag stays behind the locked door. Two locked doors.
Consumed by the smell of dirty clothes open and spewing.
Stories rubbing off. Infecting me.
I want to seal my coat up.
Wrap it in the smell of home.
But I cannot get past the keys.
So I fold it. Hug it. Long for it to stay mine.
The white flower is dying.
My hands can’t catch the petals.
They turn brown.
Like crushed flowers we used to churn to perfume
When we were little girls.
The perfume has turned to poison.
Time is falling down.
The white rabbit plays the hand on the pocket watch.
Back one minute. forward. back.
The white flower is dying.
The white rabbit licks his lips.

Puncture in the Carnage

The skin around my neck pops like bubble wrap.
Little punctures. In time. In place.
The carnage marked out under my nails. Under my breath.
I sup it up
The knee jerks The barking The tics
All wrapping up the fury inside.
I bounce them off the bubble wrap of my skull.
Pop the criteria under my nails.
Fuck You.
My skin will tell you who I am. Where I belong.
It goes back to a time when there was no name for me
idonotbelongidonotbelong
I feel sick in the park.
The sky too bright. A body moving in the wrong place. The wrong time.
Noise accelerated. Place lost. Time forgotten.
I brush the rose. Her petals fall into my hand.
One by one. Markers of time.
Forty nine days in room twenty three.
I unwrap myself.
My neck
My time
My place
idonotbelongidonotbelong
All I need. All I am. Gathers under my nails.
I sup it up.
In the bathroom. Alone.
That is where I am.
Who I am.
Where I belong.
Little cherry pops of j oozing on my hands.
Wiped upon my lips.
I smile.
Fuck you.