I still have nothing to say and I’ve half resigned to just waiting out this lull instead of forcing myself to write pages of shitty sentences that only serve to embarrass me.
Here’s a piece of my youth instead. I’m much the same now. I would like my face painted like this again.
Public transport today, rain and gales in a sick liaison, and me alone as always. A fourty minute walk ushered into a seven minute bus ride. I don’t know, I went to work and felt at odds all day.
But I’m the only one who can do ferns on coffee tops. As if that’s important.
Nobody cares as much as I do. I really do want you to have a lovely day. I really do want you to be shy and bashful in all the right places, but appreciate the trees and please acknowledge that I am trying to cheer your life on as you flee the weather and choose to struggle with the paper inside.
I have to stop beating myself up. I want to donate everything that severs a smile. But I keep the somber songs and photos of bones (yours and mine). Early morning, I dig my nails under daydreams and cling to them in this futile, self-destructive hope. Morning through my curtains, me alone as always.
All the birds, when I sit on the steps. Wings dismissed by their regularity. Not me though, alone as always, I admire. A leak, completely run out of walls, alone with the birds, unguarded and leaning back against something safe like wood.
I do make flamboyant the wonder of what others think of me, alone. It struts and parades, holds its own over the scramble of other thoughts. It might look like I have no friends. It might look like I’m terribly lonely or strung out or busy.
I am afraid you will tire of me. In truth, hasn’t everyone?
Well, that’s unbalanced. I didn’t go to your party and I didn’t go to your birthday dinner, your Sunday lunch, your place for coffee or your opportunity to molest someone you’d been lusting after.
I go to work and I go for walks and I go get drunk with young adults I don’t know as well.
You say prerogative and I say vituperative.
Sunday evening at my house and there’s a girl on my bed struggling with the sheets, braiding them into a vice around her waist because; Ovaries. I have made it quite clear I do not need your services. And you hassle me, still. Reminding me I have breasts and hormones that state quite clearly I am female.
I dance away the kinks like a fool. I am so becoming.
“But you love dancing.” - In the midst of my reminded awkwardness, I get this image in my head of me, being the closet-idiot I am. If I was not shy, I would dance with you. I would wave hello to those I have only met once. I would bare my teeth in that jaw-breaking grin I possess.
I actually am quite endeared by my huge dolt-like beam. It’s pretty androgynous, now that I think about it. It’s not pretty or handsome. It puts people at ease, because its not very aesthetically pleasing, yet I do it anyway. And then they show their stains, the slouch they allow in easy company. The slump their features take on whilst thinking, the bark of an uncontrolled laugh. They fix their hair in my presence, rough up the feet of their jeans to rub at a dry patch on their ankle.
I would absolutely hate to be intimidating.
Making things O.K without knowing what impact they have
Killing too-late-to-brush-my-teeth breath with Aloe Vera juice. My hands on my hipbones. Fuck I haven’t showered in two days.
I am the loveliest creature strolling the streets right now. Worse still, I’m smoking on a park bench next to a little kid. It’s not my fault. He sat down after I did. His mother still shoots me a weak dirty look. I am the ultimate polite smoker, my eyebrows say. Rising like my fists would. You should keep your eyes on your own fucking children.
I smile too much, maybe.
Taking 50+ pills a day. On top of the world. My feet in your house. Just saying.
Brain might just be collapsing today. Sorry about that. TN
But I was the good one.
I was feeling around in the dark for a smooth place amongst spikes. Just a clearing I could align my bones on. Desperation set in, every touch an agonizing reminder, there is no place of rest here. I couldn’t halt to heal, and I most definitely could not call any number of names I knew. So I uttered my own. When my palms grated thin and my skin was aflame, I moaned my name. ‘Selfish’ and ‘Self-centered’. I never stopped caring. But I was beginning to realize that you can’t, you just are not physically able, to have cares and concerns for everybody. And not when you cannot care for yourself.
All I did was try and make you smile.
I was watching sun creak through late-afternoon summer clouds, and I smiled. Stopped to pick daisies, guy up the street has more than enough. I smiled then, too. Beetle with wings in my kitchen. Dinner outside. One random plait in my hair. Smiling smiling smiling.
Bites her lip and runs tongue along teeth. Remembering the snag of yours.
Fuck me it’s late. Work for three hours tomorrow. Training… The same guy who apparently said, upon meeting me for 20 minutes - ‘She likes things very neat. Her shoes were tied evenly.’
Yeah. Dare you to take a step into my room, buddy. Who the fucks knows what you’ll step on. Oh and yeah, that’s not me saying I want to sleep with you.
Oh, come on. Who kisses boys in bars. WHAT’S A CASUAL KISS AND GROPE AMONGST FRIENDS, THOUGH, RIGHT? Sometimes I have to remind myself I am not 15, and I have had alcohol prior to this evening. And that the floor isn’t made of rubber balls, all lined up in rows. That any surface my hands lay on isn’t a keyboard. That you’re not here to marry me. That the music isn’t quite loud enough to cover slurred words about looking good tonight or my place.
Just something else: Send me something sweet and small.
TN
