The Storm

I wrote all this sad poetry for you and I messed up my handwriting so I wouldn’t have to read it again when I stumble upon it in some dusty box in the attic. I close my eyes and I hear your soft laugh beside me, a dent in the pillow where your head ought to be, a whisper telling me I’d better not take the car, there’s been a storm brewing and trees had their roots pulled up and fell to earth with soft thuds. My feet are firmly planted on mapped out roads and your mouth is filled with wet soil spilling out and ruining your best shirt and I lock the door and I pull the duvet up and I’m not taking the car, I’m not going anywhere.

Dot/Dash

We’re standing on our knees in the sofa, our noses pressed flat against the windowpane. I’m watching the smoke from underneath curling up past us and fading into the grey sky when you turn to me and ask if I want to go outside. The snow is falling heavily and I think you’re crazy, I say you’re crazy, I laugh to make it sound as if I’m joking. Open the window, then. Your voice is more familiar when you leave out the question marks. I can feel the cold glass against my face, my mouth breathing short morse codes slowly clouding over, leaving no trace.

keiko

you asked me if i had ever been abroad and i told you about the ferry, about the drunks, about sitting on deck at five am imagining keiko’s out there and i’m the one who’ll save him, my picture in the paper ruined by my toothy grin. i miss you, i said. i miss you even when you’re here. and you held your hand up to your eyes and stared at the sky, whispering hang on hang on, but it was barely audible and even when i strained my ears i couldn’t be sure i wasn’t just making it up. so i willed my shoes to the ground and walked the streets on the back of my hand, all in shaky handwriting reminding me never to stay long enough to lose.

She said it would be okay. That one day we’d wake up and never even remember, and I said that’s what I want, that’s what we’re hoping for, but it turns out it wasn’t. It turns out waiting for you to disappear was a waste of time and I demand a refund, I demand you back, cancer and all, you fading away in a hospital bed while I’m listening to the morphine dripping into your veins, taking you away, slowly, I want that back. The desperation and despair, final words and feet spinning in the air as somebody put their arms around my ribcage, lifted me off the ground and wrapped me up in calming words that didn’t mean a thing. Lashing out, skiving school, sleeping in a chair under the glaring lights, not remembering the last time I ate, had a shower. I want that back because nothing can possibly be worse than you being irrevocably dead and buried and gone.

Night Terror

I’m seven years old again and she tucks me to bed at night, making sure the duvet covers my toes and kissing my nose before she turns to leave. It’s dark and no clocks are ticking and no Peter Pans come flying through the window. “Do you remember when we used to walk in the woods on Sunday mornings,” I ask her and she smiles, the crackling of ice on the front porch, the pale yellow sun turning the blood in my eyelids orange, chunky scarves wrapped around her bald head. Every night she’d wait outside my bedroom door, fighting off monsters with her tiny heart fluttering behind her t-shirt, always quiet so I wouldn’t know she’s there, but I could hear her slow breath trembling, her eyes fixated on the door, and after all these years she’s still there, like a whisper just before I fall asleep.

Secret Diary of

Your voice on the phone and I pull out a chair and sit down at this table like I’ve done so many times before. I automatically let my fingers trace the marks, the ones made by my eager pencil trying to make the alphabet mine, cryptic messages from Laura Palmer before she was wrapped in plastic and thrown away like a doll you grew tired of.  What doesn’t kill you makes you feel, scraped knees and broken hearts and that burning sensation of your skin being too small for your body. I lie in bed in the dusky twilight, air leaking through my ribcage like snow falling in March, frail and persistent, and I’m counting 194 I’m counting 195 I’m counting 196 and your hands under the duvet.

Play + Record

Fix me, fix me up, I keep running in circles trying to outrun you, outsmart you, it shouldn’t be this difficult. We’re a tape on repeat, hearts beating, ears burning, wearing thin, distorted voices. You carved your name into my thigh, you branded me and made sure I knew where I belong. Your eyes on me. I’m leaning in, waiting for that noise, that very second the tape snaps. Fix me, fix me up, fuck me over. It shouldn’t be too difficult.

Standstill

You tell me I’ve changed and I just laugh it off, that new laugh I’ve rehearsed while staring at myself in the mirror loathing the person staring back. I laugh it off, not at all, let’s get drinks, I laugh it off until I’m alone, in the loos, sitting on the dirty floor trying not to heave, listening to girls with smudged lipstick talking over the music. One. Two. Three. I get up. I straighten my dress. I laugh it off.

2010

i want adventures and irresponsibility and surprises and i want to wake up next to you, i want to have good sex and bad sex and just not care at all. i want to get the fuck out of here, i want them to look at me, i want to fall asleep on couches with panda eyes and a grin on my face. i want indecent clothing and bear ears and the chilled smell that lingers in tube stations. i want to dance in the snow and go to the shop without a skirt on and get high without ever having to come down. i want to wave those demons goodbye and laugh in their faces. 2010. i’m ready.

Snow

imploding sounds and confetti gushing out over our messy floors, i want to stop time, i want to be mislead, i want to stand here in the freezing cold with you and never mind, never mind.