Watch Me Breaking

2012-02-13T22:09:00.003Z

every inch of this house is love and memory

I am not ready to let it go

but I prepare myself to

I stand in the middle room not knowing which way to turn,

Too hard to see in my mind's eye,

I am not ready to leave

I wish you would be yourself again

once more,

come back to life,

alive in these walls

alive as you were,

will you come back here?

Or do we have to pack up now...

I am not ready for the past to be over

but it is happening now

I don't think it will be long now

and I have been grieving since childhood

2010-09-11T11:21:00.003+01:00

A message from the fruits of an angel says I am mystery,
A cut in the arm of a tragic figure from the lies of literature,
Observing from the outside looking in,
It's ok to be silent and wait,
It's ok to feel the fear in your feet rise up to your throat,
I allow this, I am
A ghost from another time listening in.
Not my words,
Words from the wrong fingers.
You are the wrong person,
I throw the mask away, I do not need this!
With hands on face, I am shuddering in the circle of three
A small girl's voice is saying, 'I don't think I can take this anym....'
A set up situation is occuring, there is no criticism (apparently)
Just my father appearing from the lips of male resentment
Anger is your core. They try to pursuade me I am angry,
I am trying to be full of light, they suggest I cannot hear things about myself
That shatter the state of all-knowing,
You are my blind spot, if you go now
I will be ok, just let there be no ending, don't give me an ending -
lets dissolve into ashes and blow away,
and land on earth for stronger lovers to lie on,
I think you were mine for a brief time
but it's all totally pointless.
Delete.
No more thinking, onwards and downwards.

2010-01-21T20:53:00.003Z

She interupts the manic depressive with five minutes to go,
'You haven't said anything yet today?' she says to me,
I see tears prick the manic depressive's eyes,
This is no time to mention the thing I am trying not to think about,
The room falls silent.
Silent but for the ticking clock.
This torture is a strange routine we have accepted each week
In the blind hope that it will make us different,
'I'm sorry if I upset you', she says to the manic depressive
He looks down, 'well, you did',
She says, 'that's good, you wouldn't have been able to tell me that a few months ago'
But we all know that she is kidding herself
That anything other than the totally usual and expected has happened.
The manic depressive gets up and leaves.
Nobody speaks. I am a well-kept secret and
No changes are taking place everywhere we look.

2010-01-11T20:15:00.002Z

this snow journey I will remember as the end
you will take your silence and shadow away
but it will still be with me

2009-11-30T21:25:00.003Z

choking on the future again
i decide that i cannot be here for when it happens
i start to make a plan
but there is no plan
if only there was a plan...
or some other options
if only i hadn't met you
i am broken, this wasn't supposed to happen again
i cannot be here for another exit
i just cannot bare to see you go
say something, anything...
too late.

2009-11-06T22:28:00.005Z

This life is

Standing in front of automatic doors that don't open

And checking a silent phone

For no replies and

Still not entirely existing properly...

Here I am being completely dysfunctionally brilliant

To no avail

Your veil is thick

I look in the rear view mirror all the time

Sometimes the things behind me are way too close

In last night's dream the wannabe rockstar was back

Turning into a black cat and slinking out of my grip,

I have never had any hold on anyone...

And if your songs were supposed to be about the beginning of love

then I am malfunctioning because

I could only hear loss and endings in every line.

And I wonder if I will be able to get through the barriers

Of your personal fortress and my own mind

To tell you

That when I am with you, I don't want to leave

And when I think about you going back

It is like a death to me.

2009-10-05T09:46:00.003+01:00

Outside the cottage at the back of the Victorian hospital
I think about how my pain has been expressed and somehow contained inbetween these walls,
Left there to fester, to mould over, to be added to by the millions of others,
Us humans with our lives and our hearts and our sorrows.
Surely these windows should be black from acres of discharged bile
But yet they stare down, weary but clear,
The years of suffering have floated through them like ghosts,
Removing all debris and the dust of a thousand lives
Has been absorbed into the plaster and mortor.
Am I closer now? Am I getting closer to existing....
Religiously, week after week, I come here,
To this church for the Destroyed.
Through the secure doors I greet the faces of my fellow pain-holders,
Tired smiles, we sit in a circle, someone sighs, my heart is ragged but I can't speak,
I will listen to this building, as the layers get striped away from those around me,
I am so aware of the walls and they are crying gently,
'Why does no one ask me how I am?'
I am full now, I am heavy,
Inside me is an ever-expanding sponge of sorrow.

Little Red Car

2009-07-16T16:05:00.002+01:00

Little red car sits by the roadside one overcast March morn
These are the days of darkness
Litte red car, some warm embrace and sadness starts to dissipate

Little green dress sashays down the corridor one September day
She speaks of champagne and gladness
The Montreal wedding awaits

Little brown butt cheeks carving their way up the mountain
Some foreboding peak this day
Before tiredness can defeat
"Not I" say little brown butt cheeks and we continue on our way

Little pink shoes running lightly
OK hills, It's OK by me, it's AOK
That's us today

Little hands make light work of misery
Little hands give us the time to party
Deftly weaving words with wine
Blueberries become bubbles in the hot tub light

Little old heart sings sweetly, joyfully, greedily to the night
These two souls clamouring, comforting, cajoling to the sound of endless giggling
We'll awaken the neighbours this fair old time

Ah little friend of mine
Little wonder of these cruel times
Little less than the best of the rest
Little joy that spreads its wings to all who need them

Oh little house of Keegan come take me away.

2009-06-20T17:42:00.002+01:00

Dear Panic,
You have made me a terrorist.
Every morning upon waking,
A suicide bomb drops
In my brain
And I battle exhausted,
Through suffocation and blindness all day,
To get to the night
And pray for a ceasefire in the morning
Which never comes...
Dear Anxiety,
If I believed in god I would
Say you were a devil that
Has possessed me,
Made me distrust myself,
Made me believe the wrong things about life,
Ripping my heart, throat, stomach with clawing, shaking hands
Made me desperate to get out of this body this brain these thoughts,
I’m so exhausted now,
I have endured so much
And still your work is not done.
Dear Fear,
You have taken the past and the present from me
And so there is no future.

2009-05-15T23:02:00.001+01:00

Fuck this
Constant
Dialogue
With people
Who are no longer there
It ends n...
Soon

2009-05-15T00:01:00.003+01:00

You keep coming back,
I think to myself,
You keep coming back to that moment,
Wrenched from the womb
By metal and conformity...
And the reason no one remembers that moment is
Because it is the biggest trauma we will ever know
But I remember it
In my tissue and in my cartilage
That shock is my fuel and disaster
That moment is constant
That moment is blinding,
All consuming, horrific
So uncaring, so harsh,
I am stuck,
Half way in the fallopian tube,
Half way in life
All the way in this darkness
Where Anxiety took me by the hand and promised to look after me,
You are the only thing
That really understands me
Anxiety, you are so faithful, always there,
Ready and waiting,
You have never left me,
My life-long friend
I will be sure you mention you in my eulogy.

2009-04-22T16:26:00.004+01:00

glass in the pin prick
in the heart meridian
don't settle until you are truly treasured by someone
I think that there may be a real
actual chance of there not being any treasuring
but I think the autumn leaves today are beautiful
and this is something
this is treasure
heart meridian be quiet
there's no use crying now,
shush now, shush....

2009-04-15T14:08:00.004+01:00

Two years ago today you rang me,
It was 8 am on a Sunday and you were buzzing,
Saying you had to see me,
It felt like the start of something.
I can still remember approaching you
Seeing your small body slouched against the wall, headphones in,
Sunglasses as large as your face...
Every time I walk past that spot now, I see you there,
I am the only one who knows of the need for an exorcism of that spot
You had your back to me, I think I was hoping you wouldn’t see me
So I could change my mind and run away from whatever you were
But you sensed me standing behind you and you were on your feet,
Kissing me like we were long lost lovers.
Everything about you in my life was so alien and so unexpected
My voices started to panic me
Don’t let him see you, don’t let him see you
But there we were, next to the lake, you and me and insanity
Me acting like a normal person who was fine with everything,
You acting like a man that wasn’t about to destroy me,
On this ridiculous day when I thought I might
Be joining the ranks of the human race who are loved by another human being,
But it wasn’t to be and I got stuck, I'm sorry
You have no idea how trapped I was, I literally feared to tell you even
A fraction of the feelings so I just said nothing
Even after everything, I said nothing
Today I wake alone in a panic about death,
Today I am online when I happen to see a new photograph posted of you,
Today for some reason I feel the need to open it, to see you again,
My heart stops because She,
Your worst kept secret, has written what is obviously some kind of attempt
At an ‘in’ joke with you underneath and I absorb it like
A battered spouse, used to cruelty and mistreatment
Two years ago today it was the hottest day of 2007
And we were making love by the lake,
Except I think of it more as a kind of hate,
A kind of cruelty that I inflicted on myself
And I hope to god you never read this
I hope to god you never find out about me

2009-01-18T16:55:00.002Z

Tiny pockets of grief still remain
What I actually mean is large canyons of despair
Appear in my path every day
Trying to negotiate past them is simply exhausting
So I have to give this a name and I call it
The way things will always be
As I feel nothing and then suddenly
Standing in the shower, I notice
That the red hair dye running down my chest looks like blood and
Irrepressable negative thought syndrome attacks
And events of months, years ago pierce me like acupuncture needles
I know that when I go back to the hospital
I will be unable to convey exactly the right amount of this
So that again, they will say that there is nothing wrong with me
But I am a human waterfall
I am uncomposed
I am awash with sadness
Nobody could call this beauty
Nobody could call this ok

Watch Me Breaking Book Launch 2009

2009-01-04T16:46:00.006Z

We are very excited to announce the launch of the first ever Watch Me Breaking poetry collection!

As of today you can now purchase your very own copy of our favourite poems from the last 3 years in paper form. This collection features 45 poems dating back to 2005, many have been edited and reworked so the versions in the book will be exclusive and different to those on the blog.

To preview the book or buy your own copy please click on the front cover below.

Watch Me Breaking

Poems 2005 - 2008

By Emily Em & Violet...

Book Preview

2008-12-01T13:33:00.004Z

Sitting on fold up chairs in artificial light in the newly built community centre,
We are suffocated by the lack of history,
By the red stone, white floor and plastic windows
This morning before leaving
I suddenly became posccessed by the devil,
Ripping a door off a cupboard and screaming,
A rage from my gut, my core, my wounds,
A rage that has been dormant for eight months
I should never have read my old diary
All that rubbish you said to me
All that wasted, wasted time
You with your prince, your slave and your grace,
Eight months of suppression
I am catatonic with the exhaustion of nothing killing me,
So you choose your lesser, weaker models,
Go on, take everything and leave,
I will hoover and scrub away the debris,
There are no scratches deep enough,
I am the bionic woman, I am immortal,
You don't seem to be able to kill me, unfortunately...
Watching my dear, dear friend dedicate her new baby to
the thin air they call God
I am sure I am a freud here in her life, in my life
There is too much joy in this room, I may spontaneously combust
Her husband plays guitar and sings in an American accent
God is American, we must comply
I am sobbing during the prayers, the voices are strong,
Don't let it out here, supress, supress...
Blood of Christ, be gone now, save me from the devil inside
Pray for this brand new person, for her long and happy life
Pray that she finds her path and it is a strong and good one
Pray that she never meets a man she loves but who does not love her,
Pray that she never decides
That she is nothing if she can't perform anymore
That if she can't sing then she must hide forever
Pray that she will always be acceptable to herself
That she always shows herself compassion,
That she never gives up,
Pray she finds her voice and the words to say...
Enough.
'Thank you Father for your Grace'
Grace is the most painful thing you have given me,
Grace is a holocaust you started,
Because of your love and Grace
I am paralysed
Forgive me for wanting you when
I knew you would be the end of me.

2008-06-04T00:16:00.000+01:00

The psychiatrist looks at her nails, bored
Whilst I talk.
I am beginning to realise now that nothing can be done
About me
That this is just it to be tolerated
Until merciful death,
The psychiatrist looks at the clock behind me and says swiftly,
‘that’s it for today’,
And I am walking back down the white corridors
Thinking, ‘lucky her’

This Grief

2008-04-28T19:20:00.000+01:00

this grief is huge

2008-04-06T17:23:00.002+01:00

Control

After watching this incredible story
so familiar inside me
I realise I know it, that you and me -
We've been writing this,
living this
now and
in a past life
but what I can't work out
is whether, in the story of your life
I am the wife
or the mistress?

Across the fields

2008-03-06T21:06:00.002Z

Across the misty fields some little part of my soul resides
She is walking this fresh November day and the world no longer owns her.

There the air of judgement lays long suspended
There who we should be is what we have become

I sense the shades of happiness, flitting in the past

If only you could see me
If only you could set me free

2008-03-03T22:23:00.002Z

Saturday morning 5 am,
I am looking down at the top of your
Sweet, messed-up head as you
Kneel on the stained bathroom carpet,
Your teenage play-thing upstairs in your bed
Your head in my crotch,
You whine into my vaginal cavity
'I'm such a bastard to you'
Talk to the hand, loverboy
Talk to the fucking hand....

Violet

2008-03-02T19:51:00.002Z

Violet I write for you
Violet you are the letters that brighten the strangest days
Violet we will find where we're meant to be

Violet take the weary world
Violet live like this is your life
Violet be the Truth

On That Day

2008-03-02T19:29:00.003Z

On that day you held hands

On that day you held your future so close to you it almost took my breath away
In moments this will all become you.

Dearest nana if I could say one thing to you
Just one tiny sentence
The smallest collection of words
It would be that I wish I'd listened to you.

I wish I had held on to every word
So I could remember and immortalise you

These days my mother feels so fragile to me
She is you on that day
She is the threat of the very worst days unfolding

Some days I am You
Some days I am just the past in its mocking melancholy
All those cross words; the beauty of seconds only I have ever seen; the horror of loneliness

Just promise me this
Promise me this is all for love
And you can forgive me.

Things we talk about

2008-03-02T15:09:00.003Z

We talk about finding this place within me that is untouched that is whole that is complete and undisturbed.
I found myself searching for it today, sitting on the train, feeling saddened by the landscape, by the misery of all those other lives congregating under the oppressive dark of this Sunday. I couldn't even begin to tell you where all the surrounding emotions were coming from. Though I could pinpoint events and individuals that had sparked some sort of spiral into depression. Largely I don't like to use that term, so generic, so much a word used by people that don't comprehend or connect with sadness. So final, so medical so not really me. I use it because it's been lying in my head for so long, because my inner saboteur likes to weave it into long, devastating tirades where all she is saying is 'you are fucked, you're depressed, you're weird, this life does not belong to you, you aren't allowed it anymore.' I use it because it helps facilitate some understanding of why I enter into it so willingly, so openly. A familiar, yet inexplicable Truth.
I have started to see the patterns more clearly and to know when it just a response to some external trigger. That in all honesty I derive some comfort from descending into unadulterated, all-consuming negativity. It's not even sorrow, so acidic and angry do I become.
So now the searching starts for 'me' and I know I have often talked about this. I re-read some of the earlier poems and saw that as quite a strong theme. To feel so keenly the need for something and not know how to begin finding it.
Underneath it all though is this guilt. This guilt for holding onto sadness, to hatred, so stubbornly. To stop seeing the world and be left with just an existence of me where no-one else can enter. This is not right my love, this is not life, this is not how it's meant to be.

For February

2008-03-02T14:49:00.002Z

Your beauty is where I begin.

Nuzzling you into my hollows
Wondering where this will take us

The road to Aviemore wends its many different ways
There on the hill the silhouette of a tree whispers my desires and fears
Absorbed by the horizon I will turn to her when we are none
And the days have carried you far away.

But for now my love
For its clarity, for the wholeness of you
For tea by the lake
For the smell of you on me when you are gone
My heart stills.

2007-12-30T19:26:00.000Z

cruelty knows me,
it was the knowledge of you and the touch of you
and the loss of you,
sadness owns me
as lyrics in the album sleeve tell me
I am one of your many ex-future wives.
who will I be enough for?
all I want is a song dedication and a sleeve note
so I know I existed once.
the gypsy cards tell me to forget
but they are paper in my fire
I do not believe they actually know.
crumpled and heavy -
I cannot lose the weight and cleanse the skin.
It returns; the skin rash, the bleeding, the fat and the hatred
I know it is bad, I find myself wondering how M is
I hit myself in the face to stop it from being so apparent
my picture of you sits in the dark on the floor of the gallery
like me, it is waiting to be evaluated and then hung,
I am waiting for you to hang me
in the gallery in your heart
or by my neck from your ceiling...
probably the latter...
there is too much nothing in this life
and not enough something,
I just wish you'd said you'd loved the present
but all you give me is silence and
I have already written to thank you for this.

23 The Pines

2007-12-29T20:54:00.000Z

Oh my God I have dreamt the first line of your address twice now.
I have woken up thinking it, saying it like a mantra, 23 the pines, 23 the pines
And if someone had asked me a month ago what your address was I couldn't have told them
Could not have told them.

Oh my love I spent 14 years waiting for you.
my whole teenage lifetime and how glorious were you when you arrived?
All 22 letters, folded and read and re-read and wept upon those many times
That world of us and our words hermetically sealed between stamps and postmarks and sentences and over between, under, far under the lines.

These last 14 years have spelt more than a lifetime without you
They have been the years and I have not missed you
But somewhere between my bones, between the very fabric of my tissue between my heart and the psychology of every word spoken is you

Spital
Wirral
Merseyside

This night

2007-12-28T11:31:00.000Z

This night.

This night is Christmas eve.
This night is 3 years ago lost at the roundabout
When I will return home to you

Where did the days go?
When I was not happy but I was good

Tonight

2007-10-21T15:17:00.000+01:00

Nana I painted the sky with you tonight

Here you are the angry sunset ripping into oblivion
Asking how this time has come to pass
How the days could so carelessly disappear and take you with them

I held your hand then when only your skin knew that I was there
I didn't hold it tight enough, long enough or sweet enough to save you

But my love for you keeps us here
Where nobody can touch us

I'm stroking your back grandad
You cannot hear me but I'm here
The world in you is changing now
Where people and colour existed has faded into shades of grey
Not a beginning or an end but a somewhere inbetween

For her love she sings of the years that have past
Where goodness could wait forever
She's touching your face so gently and running her fingers through rows of corn coloured hair

2007-10-03T15:39:00.000+01:00

This day the stale scent of cigarettes is bliss
It is Manchester on a Wednesday morning
A return to me

For now the collision of fears is so acute I can hardly breathe

I wanted to write you down for all to see
'The psychology of pain' I would call it and unravel my deepest obessions

The jealousy of my previous self overwhelms me
I am angry at a life wasted in self-consumption
A door for all to see

I haven't found it yet
Whatever it is
Whatever it may be

2007-08-21T21:12:00.000+01:00

you say you won't fall in love
you say you won't love me
you don't love me
you can't love me
you won't let yourself love me
because love is dead to you
love doesn't exist
and I have never believed
that anyone would ever love me
so I would believe you
if it weren't for the fact that
when you are asleep next to me
and your guard is down
you hold onto me like
a baby to it's mother
clinging on for comfort, for reassurance, for love
and I am pretty sure that
there is some kind of love here and
I shouldn't let you do this to me
but it's too late
I am yours now
you have me
to not love forever

make yourself believe it, go on

(for L)

2007-07-23T21:46:00.000+01:00

Well my love,
This is it.

This is where it ends.

This is where I gather my memories and try to re-learn them...

Here you are beautiful and complete.

And I will keep you.

2007-07-11T22:02:00.000+01:00

I will not try to be eloquent
May language forgive me.

I will not try to explain the silence
Long has it been

This is my spiritual sign in
I miss you; I will be back

Think of me when the words run freely
Soon may I return

Good bye
God bless
I am with you

2007-04-03T12:53:00.000+01:00

A year on and now I know...
Inside me is hell
I dream of a plane crash
Everyone survives
Just another thing to try and choke down
And get over
I have been an idiot
And I have to accept
That this is all there is for me
Toughen up, toughen up...
“when they get want they want,
they never want it again”

I was thirteen when I went wrong

2007-03-31T15:07:00.000+01:00

It was a Sunday night
when everything changed inside me forever
Like birth, puberty, menopause and Alzheimer’s all at once
The truth hit me with the force of an atomic bomb
And blew my world away/apart/whatever
Peace of mind gone for good.
I was thirteen when I went wrong
When my childhood died
When my adulthood got stopped in it’s tracks
No one was there when it happened
I was on my own, in bed - staring into blackness
When I realised,
I crept downstairs
I said to my mother
‘I’m so frightened’
She said
‘what of?’
I said
‘everything’
she didn't know what I was saying
but over time it became clear,
I was thirteen and I was over.

2007-03-21T23:32:00.000Z

It falls on empty ears and broken limbs
All the things I cannot say
My heart stops,
My lungs are clogged
Nothing can penetrate this
Depression isn’t even the word
I was wondering if I exist at all
And then you email me so I guess I must
But really, is this any evidence?
How hard is it to type…
I had to look out onto the road, away when the young lovers
embraced in front of me after 3 days apart
You could have felt the love in the next county
You could feel my poor, scared heart shake in India
(They thought it was an earth quake) and I am
Looking in my diary for my next fix
I need the pins to fill me with hot blood
You take your drugs and I will
Balance my chi and walk down the street
Two stone lighter, until it returns by the time I have driven home
Do I feel something deep and meaningful for you?
No, this is surely a need in me for rescue and sanctuary
28, Apparently this is the year of change
So change me
So change
I’m waiting

Amy

2007-02-20T16:32:00.000Z

You poor anorexic thing

I sit across from you wondering if your hollows will hold my misery.
This is my first encounter with depression made manifest
And it is Vast.

Yet your dignity astounds me.
Here am I drowning in the self-indulgence of three days of tears
How I held the shower rail wondering how I could learn to breathe again
Whilst you silently absorb the world's ills and make them yours.

You wear my pink gap sweater
You are so normal
And I am trying to unravel your sorrow
I want you to indulge me.

2007-01-28T23:32:00.000Z

I walk down the field in the winter sun
Each step more determined,
A new energy growing from my heart outwards
Healing the cuts on me, healing the breaks in me
My heart begins to fill up with
The strangest, unfamiliar sensation that
I do not love you anymore - ha! I laugh
Who'd have thought it?
I start to run, down to the water's edge
Where I have cried for you many times
Music in my ears, a smile as fucking wide as the universe
Spreading across my face,
No more, no more, no more
I say to the current,
Hand on heart,
It's over in here, you are dead to me
I want to ring you and tell you
Tell you that
The river banks have burst, my darling
My love for you has over-flowed, washed away,
It is now in the ground
And you are growing into rich new grass.
I feel healthier than I have in seven years
It is over now, can you feel it?
I might be free

New year

2007-01-27T18:04:00.002Z

You take my hand saying "Because I think you're going to die"
We traverse the lengths and depths of Stockport
As if we can somehow walk off death

But know this.
Know that I never wanted to die.
That I never wished for anything but peace
Just a few hours or days where my soul could truly rest

...right now I cannot answer the door
It is mid January, you must be freezing
But I have to wait for the hatred to subside
J your face is so contorted
Tell me what you despise my sweet and we can change it.

But this is my year
This is the making of me
This is when I will love my hardest
Run my fastest
And start to destroy you.

Some litte joy

2007-01-27T17:53:00.000Z

So happy is bad
If you forgive the opposite equation
Joy crows arrogantly without thinking
Of whose feelings she may be breaking

Whilst sorrow sits peacefully
Sorrow wraps her hands up together and ponders the passing of time
She will be quietly good forever weaving beauty into the lives around her
Though this they will never see

Joy straddles her latest conquest
Wild abandon all around her
With misery observing solemnly knowing what is to come

Joy holds misery tightly and feels her dissolve
Evil dissipates slowly till the goodness of sorrow takes control.
Now happy is gone evil has subsided
Sorrow is good she and I are one.

For HB

2007-01-27T17:32:00.000Z

I walked the route of a time before
The road stretches upwards with its summer promise
This day the air is chilled and cruel
And I am drenched in August heat

You my darling are tiny and bustly
We slide into All Bar One you say Like London but smaller
I concur with the first buds of pride and something approaching belonging

I am pre-anger pre-hysteria and the world is glorious
How all consuming the blanket of warmth

Later we will throw ourselves into damp fury fuelled dancing
My skirt is soaked but I do not care
This our time and I love you

Dear Emily

2006-12-30T21:55:00.000Z

Never worry that I will see you and not know you
Never worry that what is inside you is too ugly to convey
In your misery you are incredibly beautiful to me
And I have always seen you
Right inside
And I let you choose me because of this
Great light and great darkness you have
And I admit, I can't bare for anything bad to happen to you
But it will and you will be glorious
I will worry but not because of what you said, because you were too honest
But because you may not have been honest enough
You have already be victorious, triumphant in ways no one knows about -
N.Walsh did not bring you to your knees and 2004 does
Not have to own you - you were who you were going to be from birth
Look at her now - look what you lost
YOU FUCKING IDIOT!
Not self-pitying - self-aware
In touch with the life source and feeling eveything
=Really Living!
Nothing is shocking, it is purely a relief, a relief to hear
A relief to feel at one, like I made the right choice with my life partner!
Heh - look, what I've got - isn't she brilliant? She understands!
And I think in your fear of alienating me you are forgetting who you are dealing with!
Sylvia wrote it for me 'I know the bottom, I know it with my great tap root...I do not fear it for I have been there'
You telling me about your very worst is not a repellant
It is like reaffirming the vows, like getting remarried, like remembering why you loved
an old song ('I'm Miss World, Watch Me Breaking...')
Courtney would be proud of us
I'm proud of us
There will be times when you will feel that you no longer know yourself but
I will always know you
And you will always be ok with me.

Dear violet

2006-12-26T11:50:00.000Z

I thought when I wrote the last post that maybe it was a mistake.
A bit too raw, a bit too honest, a bit too me the way I really am, a bit self-indulgent.
Cue Heremy: "You're the most self-pitying person I have ever met."
And all the other voices clamouring for attention.
I think I could allow a quick quote from N.Walsh if I was to cite all my sources,
But this isn't an essay and I'm not about to be All Too Honest.

So I was thinking about why it was important to write something so blatantly hysterical
Obvious of course
Some outlet for a half hour of intense panicked misery.
Very necessary.
Very honest in that moment.
Of course there are resonances, an overspill into the rest of my life, like
Oh my god yes I am scared
Yes I am aware of my internal host all the time and whatever it is that he's doing
Yes I want to rip myelf apart regularly
But I have a sense of humour, know there are people much worse off out there etc and to let this be IT is not just defeatist it's insulting to true misery.
Misery is relative..
Ah good point.
But you get my drift...

No denial here.
No 'But that's not real, it was just...'
Let's face it - that's real, it's me, same as it's all of us when we are in a state of internal conflict, obsession, self-absorption etc.
Same as we all use words like love and hate with wild abandon when the mood takes us.
Same as once I loved you H. and now I view myself in 2004 like a character in a play or a novel - I could read myself and be absorbed in the motives and psychology of a mind so deceived and still step back saying 'But how...? Can't you see?' poor girl etc etc.
But really?
Poor girl...?
Probably one of the most important, defining chapters in my life and I want to write it off. That time that taught me so much about the nature of love, the differences between and myself. So I discovered the thing that finally broke me, but it taught me something about boundaries, limitations and that there really isn't ever an end, nor should there be.
Until the ultimate One.
So all these entries that we put Violet, you and me, not trying to make sense of each other, just ourselves and I sometimes worry, I picture you in my head reading this thinking 'I really thought I understood her and I don't.'
These are our snapshots - our literary photos that we are presenting to the world.
What are we trying to say?
I could not speak for you, but I think I want to immortalise these moments, even when they are cloying, muddy and disturbed. even when they entirely lack eloquence.
We both know that sometimes the ugliest things have the greatest inner beauty.
I wear my 'Courtney love is God' badge with pride. Because the times when we were maybe our most confused she was our distressed, fucked -up siren, pants over her head, menstrual blood in her heart, screaming into her personal oblivion and it touched us maybe more than any other sweet soliloquy ever could.
But even us, even me, even you, can present our normal faces to the world, once we're done with the inner dissection.
My dad just came back from his run (my stomach still flips when someone mentions the 'r' word) and charged in here. I thought 'oh my god he's going to see this' and I am a little girl again.
Point proved.
Love you honey.
xx

A little honesty

2006-12-22T17:02:00.000Z

Oh my god what is this? Is it some sort of life comedown?
I was coping so well and, well, ignoring the fact that it's getting worse pretty well and now it's back to how it was.
Utterly fucking hopeless.
Which bit next?
What else do you want to take?
I have been as careful as I can bear to be.
Really ,truly, honestly.
I have detoxed this thing out of my life to get a closure that will never come
And now I can't cope because it should have started to resolve itself and it hasn't and how am I blame?
Well obviously I am to blame because even though I have stopped I can't and I can't believe I actually believed it was going to get better and now what I'm obviously facing is something that could mean the End.
Already.
Only 27 and you're telling me it's over.
Really?
And all I want is to get up and not be afraid to step onto the ground and not wonder how on earth both my knees are now dodgy and how someone who wants to be good so badly can't be.
How on earth will he cope with this with the delusion gone?
When it all finally comes to a head.
When my back caves.
Or suddenly I can't walk and it makes me a different person because it's all I want to do and be and there are no words left to make up for the complete fucking pointlessness of it?
And I wonder why I bemoaned not running when it would be great just to take a long hard walk and not feel like I'm rotting from the inside out like this disease isn't Everything now.
Because it is.
I finally know I am about to be in love
And it's over.

Of you

2006-11-12T20:38:00.000Z

I had to collapse into a state of suspended sadness yesterday. Because my natural propensity for sobriety of soul -if not for being sober - could not allow me to fully enjoy what had passed.
Sure, we'd had our moments of 'oh my god, can this ever work?' but essentially here we ARE.
We have now reached the thing that I have wanted for so long and it's as if I've suddenly gone numb. Like I had to connect with sadness to conjur the old friend in me, saying 'don't worry, I'll be here to catch you when you fall.'

Dear grandpa

2006-11-12T20:27:00.000Z

You cannot die. I have to forbid it.
If you die then we all die and the world will never be whole again.

The books are tainted now without you
I skimmed my eye over charlotte bronte and she said nothing to me.
The spines are confused and ovestretched, they speak nothingness now you are gone.

I kissed your head today and felt the echo of a time before.
There were continents in the hallway.
I lived a thousand lives before breakfast and there the tastes were enormous.

I will find you grandma and bring you back again.
One last time.
We will sit by the window with our artistic plates before us, drinking tea and grandpa will join us.
He will say something we will never remember.
But we will be immersed in love again.
And this world will be ours.

Not the wedding

2006-11-12T20:10:00.000Z

It was just now
I saw the curtain how it used to be.
Before the colour changed.
The curtain was my landscape, those long hours in semi-darkness, drifting between worlds and consciousness.

We would talk for a year and then finally you would say 'I'm going to sleep now'
Signing off the conversation.

Often I would wake and know that you were dead. The ghosts would be waiting for me, as my cheek gradually turned towards you.

That was how we understood each other.
The long nights, intertwining our sense of being into the other's imagination.
You reconstructed your existence for me, as I ran from player to player and back again, intercepting with my own separate narrative - where our worlds would collide and then off again.

Those decades of stories, scattering themselves along the curtains - up and around, back and under, with the wizened flower faces telling them back to me.

Sometimes I think I find myself.
A patch of carpet, the way the sky streaks in through the window with its promise of another perfect day.
Long, endless, hopeful, untouchable and so very kind.

Where will we be today my darling?
Down by the sea, beyond the horizon, towards dawn, where the mind stretches freely.
And we are home again.

2006-11-04T20:43:00.000Z

You are the only one.

You are the tree in the park, under which you will say to me:
'I want to kiss you'

You are the summer sun
And I am drenched in you

You are the glittering light from the lake
The grass I bask in
I am immersed in You

The autumn sun.
She speaks of you and the time that has passed.

I graze the place of reckoning.

Where all our joy collided sits no-one
And now the leaves are turning

So now it will always be July for me
Here in this place
Where you were the only one

On the road to Nottingham

2006-10-31T20:49:00.000Z

On this road I taste Friday night
I taste Asda chips and a bottle of bacardi breezer
Sweet is the smell of your car

So sweet mixed with the acrid scent of dance music
Some far away sweaty existence
Soon to be ours

Long ago are the endless nights
Refracting in a street light on the M42.

Why now?

2006-10-31T20:37:00.000Z

The question they ask of survivors who then proceed to do it is: why now?
Why choose now, when you have come so far?
Why choose now, when the hardest thing was getting through hell to be here?

It never changed.
There was simply no progression.
No new days just the muddle of old experiences fused.

This is not one thought.
It is the only thought.
This is not one dark moment.
It is every moment.

So when joy ceases to be punctuated by the occasional moment of malevolence
So when malevolence is all powerful.
When the things that made the most sense make no sense at all.
That is why.
That is the day.

Wedding list

2006-10-31T20:33:00.000Z

No tricks.
No haircuts.
No leaving.
No trains to Glasgow.

2006-10-23T22:29:00.000+01:00

This is legendary

This is endless

I’ve said that before

It’s hard to be original when things are

Constantly the same

Wasting time

This is thoughtless

This is non-existence

Raise a glass, an eye-brow

A child to hate everything

Raise me from the over-looked

To greater and better things

Like genocide

Time to start enjoying my life

Take a train north,

North into your cold, dead heart

I am here to remind you

That things could be worse

Remember when you weren’t a bastard?

Of course you can’t, your imagination is not vivid enough

It’s time to learn how to listen

It’s time to tell you that

I’ve lived before

On slave ships

And in wars and through plagues

And famine

This poverty is old news to me

Been there, got the t shirt, got the std,

Got the beating, the prison sentence and the death penalty

Next lifetime I am going to be even worse, I will get my revenge

You won’t see me for all the hell in your head

That I gave you and when I decide the time is right

The pain in your heart will eventually kill you

And I will give the eulogy, during a ticker tape parade,

Dressed in red to a backing track of canned laughter

From where I am

2006-10-19T20:47:00.000+01:00

I am writing to you from the edge of my existence. And now you must understand that here is where it ends. Here is where it has to end.
Somewhere within that sunset I belong. Above the hills the sun is streaming into the valley. Some perfect vista. My soul rears within me and reaches.
For now I exist not within this blank and hostile present, but back there. Way back when, beyond when I started to remember, when days were an existence that did not ride hopelessly upon the bank of memories.

More now than ever before, time has merged into a stretch of something grey. When I lose my sense of context there is my rediscovery of self, the tiniest glimpse of what could have been perfection, but now will never be.

So you understand, now I am taking me to where I truly belong. Into the blistering heat, floating mindlessly to my oblivion and way beyond.

Something Seminal

2006-10-19T20:36:00.000+01:00

Right now I could have reached inside myself to rip it out. God knows I tried; grabbing with utter futility at the scar tissue, trying to break it.
I think if I could turn my entire self inside out, then it would be mine again, for surely this is what I miss. Surely the anger and sense of a soul left flailing and bereft can only be because I do not recognise it anymore.

The Departure.

This is the day. This is my day. With the sun slamming onto the pavement and right back into my eyes.
This is where I found myself, along the banks of the Clyde, with Heremy receding into the bloody distance.
There in that life where anger reverberates; the rancid smell of dope clinging to the walls. Oh there you do reside.

But no not I. Not now and not forever more.

Here be I. Slamming myself into the tarmac. Hot under the soles of my feet. This unfelt, silent heat that permeates my very existence.

Soon I will be sick, exhausted, bewildered and yes, a little angry. But it hurts, I need to stop. But you know you can't. You know this proves you are much better than He and maybe more than She. But really, really I can't, really where the cobbles end I must stop.
And somehow I don't. Somehow I am digging deep here and starting to bury you.

2006-10-05T21:04:00.000+01:00

It was late August/early September and shooting star season
Or so she heard,
She had never seen one herself but her friend saw them all the time -
She was always hearing about the shooting stars from her.
‘Daniel and I saw 12 shooting stars on Saturday night,
We stayed up all night until 5 am and it was incredible,
Just lying on our backs on the trampoline in Avril’s garden,
looking up at the night sky whilst the stars went crazy above us,
Honestly I have never felt so alive…’
It certainly sounded magical,
The sort of magical that didn’t exist in her life.
One night she drove home after hearing about another night, another man, another amazing shooting star display and
Standing out on the field behind her house
She screamed up at the sky,
‘why do you keep this magic from me, universe? When am I to see a shooting star?’
And her voice echoed around the silent valley whilst the sky stared back at her unblinking,
How can it be that one person’s sky can be so full of wonderment, so full of twinkling certainties
Whilst another’s sky so empty, so black?
There are no answers.
She didn’t believe that she would ever see a shooting star, she perhaps just wasn’t the type.

2006-09-27T16:43:00.000+01:00

Her only friends, the sad songs
On loop in her head
Be creative, it’s all you have
Everything will go
Hold on to the words inside
Hold on to the desire to sing
It will keep you alive
When everyone you know has gone

2006-09-09T20:53:00.001+01:00

I want to tell you so much that I am worried all these words will come out before I have time to know it and you will know me all too soon as they always do and you will deicde to lose me again to assign me to the past to the place where memories congregate they say everything differently more eloquently then they ever really were said and the glow is so soft so gentle so everything I need so there is so much to tell you so much you need to understand to really know what is afoot in this head that I can't understand I have to change my life and I can't but I can and it is my will and my way that says somehow that it can't and the fear of this old old face that betrays me so I am afriad of when you will see all this and know it is time time out time over over and out.

2006-09-09T20:43:00.000+01:00

I find you in everyone
Where I become the self-pitying little fuck.

When I see you I know what to do
I know what I would like to do.

Since when could I not bear to look at my face?
Since when did I have to look at my face?

I have spent these years pining for myself
And I know what age feels like it looks like me

Give me time
Give me the days again the sun the moon the fields

I am obsessed with her I say to myself
One day you won't be and I know it's untrue

Because all I ever wanted was to be beautiful
Not in your cheap modern way but truly astonishing

I only ever wanted to be so thin I could possibly die
I only ever wanted to be positively worshipped and adored

In this life, for there is only One
I wanted the best to be the best and to humble them all

Back on the horizon my soul exists
Beyond the sky to the sea

2006-09-09T20:37:00.000+01:00

I miss who I was back then.
By 'then' I don't know what I am referring to
Or more specifically, when
But I am certain there was a 'when' or at least that there Had to be.

I caught myself in that other time yesterday
So glorious was the sun
drowning the road
With the glare of intense summer streaking from the cars
The haze of late August, yet early September
And I am there again.

I say to myself 'where are you?' to resurrect that time
When time itself was unthreatening
I think maybe a few years ago, maybe ten
Back back back again

2006-08-18T00:23:00.000+01:00

There is nothing,
More nothing than anyone else I know
And the sound of nothing is unbearable
As the quiet phone sits beside me failing to bring me your voice
Your voice that could change everything,
And you say you want to talk to me, you say this to everyone,
To everyone but me, the person who needs to hear it the most
And whilst you are saying this, you have no idea that I got tired of waiting for you and now
I am waiting for the boy in the band who is being allusive and mysterious
(At least, in his head he is) and
It seems that all my (almost) relationships are all about waiting and
Wondering and not getting in the end.
Never assume, I tell my friends, never assume that you have it
‘In the bag’ cos that’s when you will lose it and
They smile pitifully at me, cos what can they do? They don’t wait, they just get,
And no amount of hoping and wanting and cosmic ordering can help me now
Now that everyone left is too scared and too ‘emotionally unavailable’,
Too messed up by their last girlfriends who left them cruelly,
Or became a lesbian, or went to India,
Too messed up by their estranged father, the child abuse, the drugs and the rock 'n' roll dream
And I have seen it all, and heard it all and I understand and I listen -
Everyone wants to die now because they are too lonely and there is no one left for me
After all you other girls have reaped your damage, I am left with the dregs of damaged men and
There is nothing in my life, just a shop and some photographs and some things
The boy in the band once said that got my hopes up when really
He is scared, just as scared as me about relationships
He covers it up by saying he can’t be in a relationship because he just wants to sleep around
Trouble is I’m the only one that would have him and he will lose me whilst he waits for others
And you - you can’t talk to me because of ‘The Feelings’, (what feelings?!)
The Feelings are in the way each time.
God damn these feelings that you have so much of
And whilst I wait for you to tell me what they are
And you wait for them to go away
I have nothing
More nothing than anyone else I know
And it sucks.

2006-08-07T23:59:00.000+01:00

First love = first suicidal pain
And then it happens
Over and over again -
Fuck this,
I’m done
I’m not waiting for you anymore
I’m not waiting around just to be rejected again
I’m closing down my heart,
There’ll be further reductions and
Everything must go
Then I’m selling the empty vessel to
The lowest bidder
And they can build a multi-storey car park over it,
Or a 24 hour Tescos
Or a nuclear power station and
No one will ever know it was here
And I will never have to feel the humiliation of
Putting myself out there
And getting nothing back
Ever again......

Where are you?

2006-07-11T23:38:00.000+01:00

He speaks with sadness and I understand
Standing away so as not to be too close to absorb the pain
I think he will see me crumble but I stand firm
‘I will be free at midnight’, he says, ‘call me and we can talk about your emotional weirdness’
I say ‘thank you’ and write the emotional cheque in my heart
And wonder what happens to friendship so old that it becomes something else
All of a sudden,
When you weren’t paying attention
Because usually people just drift away and are lost forever
This new feeling is imagined I’m sure - I wait for the news of the
Inevitable new girlfriend obtained one night when I didn’t go out so I can
Take a knife to these veins and say
‘Here we go again’
But the news doesn’t come…yet
Wouldn’t it be strange if you and I became lovers after all this time?
Am I reading too much into these not so throw-away flirtacious comments and sideways looks...
Could I touch your skin and be ok - be more than ok, even?
I shouldn’t even entertain these thoughts but
My mind always runs away from me,
Sometimes I think it would be better if it kept on running and never came back….

2006-06-25T18:50:00.000+01:00

So where are we now?
So where we are now is
Quite simply
In my heart.
Really truly crawling our way through its structure that neither of us will ever see.
But we are here somehow

I am bereft in here, seeing you again, thinking
I want you out but also in.
Right in where you can't ever leave
Where you are lost, next to a valve that I can't locate
Not by thought. Certainly not touch. Only maybe by imagining.

2006-06-22T17:21:00.000+01:00

Irony is me listening to you,
The person who has hurt me the most,
Complain sadly that girls only want bastards
And no one wants you because you are so
Nice and so very sensitive
(Never underestimate self-awareness
As the most important quality in a human...)
Irony is me,
Wanting to hold you and make your pain go away
Whilst you tell me that I don’t quite fill the hole in you,
Irony is that these late night phone calls,
With these fucking words, painful and thoughtless,
And weighted down
With misunderstandings and the unsaid,
Are all I have to keep me going
And yet they practically kill me each time.
What is irony? Discuss.

2006-06-11T22:53:00.000+01:00

You, my non-starter
Burning in my heart still,
I cannot bare to lose you,
Even though I haven’t had you yet
But I feel whatever we had,
No matter how small or unspoken it was
Has already gone,
And I had no say in the matter.
One day my own decisions will govern my own life
But until that day….

2006-05-23T00:14:00.000+01:00

This is lonely
This life
This thing-ness that is
This existence
This small body
These imperfect limbs
This fossil heart
That tires me out
These secrets
These incorrect beliefs in
This brain in this head
I guess there is no reason to like me or love me
On a day like today
When I went about everything in entirely the wrong way
So I am not surprised
But I wish it wasn’t everywhere all around me
Being all normal and ordinary
This extraordinary thing
‘my god - you’ve haven’t lived’
I know
Who says you have to?
But I can feel the waste every second of every day and
I am getting smaller
And less interesting
Hopefully one day I will just disappear.

2006-05-17T11:13:00.000+01:00

It comes from no where
The feeling like it’s going on without me
And everything is out of my control
I am taken by surprise to learn that
You two have been talking a lot recently
You who are both my friends but didn’t know each other
Until a few weeks ago when I introduced you
He tells me that you have a lot in common cos
You have both just come out of a long term relationship
I think well yes if ‘just’ means 7 months ago -
And ‘lots in common’ means you both went out with someone and now you don’t
What a unique experience - how can I possibly compete?
Cos that’s obviously never happened to me, oh no wait -
There was the one 6 years ago that was so awful
It has prevented me from getting over it to this day and going out with anyone else
But yeah - what would I understand about pain?
You guys carry on consoling each other
Like I am just an ‘in the mean time whilst waiting for someone better to come along’ person
Existing purely to do the ground-work listening,
To build the fucking bridges
To introduce people to each other
So the Real Relationships can begin
I hope you are very happy together

2006-04-28T21:16:00.000+01:00

You say
‘do you know what I mean?’
All the time
And you don’t need a response but
You ask anyway and I always smile and nod and laugh and
All those things because even if I don’t know what you mean, I want to
I am thinking about this last week as
I was lying on your couch and you
Were getting something out of the oven
Next door in the kitchen
And you were talking about something,
God knows what - music probably
I was trying to listen
Music which is so important to you
More so than life, it seems
You are the passion and the intensity I feel inside me
But never express, you are
Something I want to be, something I want to have
And you say again, ‘do you know what I mean?’
And suddenly I wake up inside myself
I want you so much I can hardly recognise myself in
This scenario and these feelings
And a look is passed between us,
Burns between us - you smile in a way that means I have to look away
Cos you know and I know that this is rare
And this is something that will need to be addressed
And I know what you mean but do you know what I mean
When I say
I am scared of this,
Whatever this is...
Only time will tell

2006-04-17T15:52:00.000+01:00

God help me, darling - I am losing my mind,
Fragment by fragment as I become
One empty shell where once was hope
I have lost everything inside me
Apart from the knowledge that
I love you so much and for nothing,
Please stay and be my elixir,
Please be the thing that makes me happy
Something has to, it must be you, it must, it must……
Or I fear my my heart will bleed into my uterus and be miscarried out,
Out into this fucking life of pain
I can’t bare this anymore

I admit it. I'm a little obsessed

2006-04-04T21:31:00.000+01:00

This is not a poem.
not that any of the others are but I simply had to write lest I forget.
'So what is he called?' and I say 'Soren' They all look mildly aghast. 'Soren?!' I say 'Yes, it's what prescriptive text comes up with when you type in 'Rosemary' (may I add that that is not why she named her baby 'Soren', although rather innovative don't you think?..). Their faces still don't change. It's almost as if I'd said 'yes, he's called testicle. Testes for short.' and then Emma corrects me, she says 'you mean predictive text' and I do that embarrassed humble pie nod. Then decide to contest it 'well, in some ways it is prescriptive because it's defining what you should be saying..' and then realise I obviously spend too much time having 'who can be the most anally retentive' contests with my dad. So anyway, the conversation inevitably turns to what we would call our children. I say 'Holly for a girl'. Resolutely and far too much as if I've been thinking about it tucked up in my spinster flat with cocoa for the last 26 years awaiting my prince charming.
Then he says 'I like Poppy' and without thinking I say 'oh that's far too hippyish'. My bizarre knee jerk reaction to my brain saying 'Dear fuck, he's just named your second daughter. You are meant to be, it's love!!'.
so I am glad that even if we are never together at least we want to call our children the same thing. Maybe when we bump into each other ten years down the line on a Sunday when we have the kids because their father (I marry some b\8stard who proves I'm an unstable alcoholic and therefore gets custody) or mother has them during the week we will introduce them with the same name. He will look surprised and I will pretend to. But inwardly I'll be thinking 'I fucking knew it!!'

2006-04-04T21:28:00.000+01:00

This be the day.
This be the day the epiphanies collide
Along the motorway home when the thought arises
One day I will leave and perspective will make me love you.
One day the haze of time will shroud you so exquisitely that I will wonder
Why and how could I ever hate you.

That was the day.

2006-04-04T21:05:00.000+01:00

What is it like?
I walked past Holland park yesterday and I could see them all.
The hazy light where summer is thinking of approaching and Spring hasn't quite subsided yet.
As if it's the most natural thing in the world and looking at them it seems to be but not for me anymore. not for now my love not for now.
I sensed that time of before down by the river last week, with that similar light, tentative. Our promise of things to come.
I used to be there escaping You and this my new love with me. When I can't quite believe that I have it because surely it doesn't belong to me. Just as You/He didn't this could not be mine.
I can have it whenever I need it and it can never control me.
Or so I thought.
Now trying to explain and it just won't wash. As if I'm saying to you all 'isn't he gorgeous, I love him so much' and you just can't believe me. You can maybe appreciate it or think you are near to understanding, but unless it is you and it is that person you are never even close.
Because right now and I fear for a long time and maybe forever I won't see those numbers in print.
I won't escape Him down by the waterside, along by the green, hitting the pavement hard. I won't have my little bit of creation that I carved out for myself and none of them could touch. Just like the fear of not loving or feeling again. not hearing Alanis sing or getting dressed for a night out or eating chocolate or watching friends or being hugged or having just one last kiss. Just the same and maybe more than not being young again does it start to make my belly recoil.
Just the last time out by the bridge. stopping for traffic. stopping because the thing I felt made me has broken me. With its persistent tingle the ever present mocking.
You are undone.

2006-04-04T20:38:00.000+01:00

So I said 'What I can't understand is refusing to forgive someone. We all make mistakes so ultimately you have to accept that you need to forgive people, because one day you may need to be forgiven yourself.'
The hypocrisy of this statement strikes me before I am into the 2nd word. \but as is the nature of speech it comes out in its false entirety before I am able to stop myself.
so I can understand why a person could not forgive someone because somehow I haven't quite forgiven you.
As a whole individual I see in you perfection. I whispered it to you the night you sat crying on Hannah's sofa, saying 'I can't believe my sister is having a girl'. There I was truly feeling the words 'oh you are perfect' as they whistled out of me. Not even a fitting statement in response, but it seemed to go with the moment. New life and perfection.
This is the shameful understanding that once 'best friends forever' (not that we ever said that ohso care bear phrase, but we lived it in the way we looked at each other and never judged) can be no more. not best friends forever apart from that conversation we had in July when I was sat on the Green with a flask of coffee, soaking up those rare Glasgow rays. The day I walked into a shop to get a bottle of water and came out with Shona and a couple of pints.
Sat on the green and the day is soothing. I want you to know that this is not about you that it's just the exposure that this group is so fraught with its unspoken politics and its unspoken judgements that I had thought would never come. It isn't about you but yes it is and we have Forever no more.
In essence yes I forgive you I love you are perfect yes you are of course you are.
But we are broken.

2006-03-19T23:21:00.000Z

I am a professor of negative thought,
Curator of the museum of secrets and incorrect brain function,
I have travelled the world explaining
What it is like living under the constant threat of nothing in particular
To audiences of every variety.
One day recently whilst giving a speech on the
Bleak existence I find myself in
A prominent audience member stands up to speak
She says ‘ your imaginative use of language makes everything appear to be catastrophic’
She waves my lecture notes at me,
‘when in actual fact, I have read your account of daily events and there is nothing here that really looks that bad…’
Silence in the auditorium,
Whilst everyone contemplates that things may not be as bad as I say they are…
I drop the microphone and start to get dressed again (I always lecture naked)
I apologise for deafening the front row with my
Deep internal sigh
Because now I realise that I will have to start the show again
Because you don’t seem to get me
Because you don’t seem to realise
Because
Everything IS catastrophic
To me
This is the whole point of me being here
And you being there
If everything actually was catastrophic
For everyone
I would not be giving this speech to explain what is was like to feel that everything is catastrophic when everything maybe isn’t because it would be normal and
You would all know,
‘Ahhh’ she says, ‘carry on’
But the stage is empty and the world tour is over

2006-03-07T23:04:00.000Z

Refusing to be young and reckless
She carried on until
One day it came after her,
With the force of a thousand deaths
And she cried all through the winter
Give me back my childhood,
All time spent waiting for people to die,
Give me back the hours in mourning for nothing
Give me back the thin 17 year old who walked along
The sand weighing only 6 and a half stone
Pharmaceutical guinea pig, lost
Brain damaged and tired
Give me back the 10 year old that felt sad
Because she was the only one in her class
Who didn't have a boyfriend
Or the 13 year old that felt the Great Fear
One Sunday night and didn't leave the house for a year
Give her back to me and I will tell her that
All that was nothing
Compared to this,
The endless nothing,
The adult in the counselling room,
Waiting for yet another trained professional
To not understand and not help in anyway
I am not in love with my sadness
I am not the cliche you were expecting
I will not say things on your tick list
And I am not crying because it's good to talk
And this is some big relief
I have not realised anything I didn't already know about life and me
Stop making notes
Things are so different for everyone
There is nothing that can be done
All I want is to have lived my youth
Which is gone forever
So what can you do about that?
Nothing .

2006-02-27T20:57:00.000Z

She exists
Without love
Silently watching,
Wondering why it passes
And never visits her
So many nights lost to misery
But in the morning,
When the new day brings panic
She is glad to wake up alone,
Glad that there is no one to witness
The black moments,
Sure that they would repel any way
Sure that this must be the reason,
That people can detect a wrongness inside her
That her dimensions are not perfect
Mannerisms misjudged,
Humour obscure,
Intellect faulty,
When actually
There is no reason
That anyone can see
It’s just
The way
Things are….
Beyond comprehension

2006-02-11T12:39:00.000Z

I walked along the roadside last night
Mounds of leaves illuminated, midnight autumn again.
The darkness is every year since 1997 re-joining once more
Where the stained glass window peers used to be the RNCM
Wind grabs and tosses our memories here.
Depression at the gate, fear in your hand

We're running there where they see us no more
Lamplight frozen between us
That mute second of salvation

You say how you want to rip your face apart
As if beauty is too much for you
Where you have smelt deception has become you.
I lie next to you watching deliriousness become some growing hatred.
We create loneliness here, our private obsession.
Depression at the gate, fear in your mouth.

In that one time we cease talking because right now we understand
Taste the idiciocy of this hideous/perfect life

I think I want to rip my face apart
Because loveliness was never meant for me
Where I have watched/read/listened to taunting has become me.
You lie next to me sensing that drunknenness is now cold sobriety.
We creat loneliness here, its their private obsession.
Depression at the gate, fear in my..

In that one time we see his face disappear as we now know
More sensical to choke together in this __ life

2006-01-31T22:22:00.000Z

Ray
(June 26th 1922 - Jan 31st 2002)

You are the gate at the end of the garden
The overgrown path and the empty shed,
You are the cracked stones leading to the pond
And the summerhouse next to the gooseberry bushes,
You are the wallpaper, now painted over
And the curtains that remind the little boy of his childhood,
You are the yellow cardigan and the zip-up slippers,
The unfinished crossword on the green armchair.
You are the black cat that waits patiently for your return
And the ache in the stomach of the little girl
Who cried on the phone, ‘my daddy, my daddy…’
You are the silent presence in all of my dreams
And the ghost in the window the last time we saw you.
You are the instructions in the grandfather clock,
We gave you everything you asked for -
A cardboard coffin
And a summer meadow grave...
You are the gentle flowers that return each spring
And so,
You are not gone.

2006-01-29T19:01:00.000Z

I saw you across the bar and mouthed 'Your hair has got so long'. You looked at me with that warmth that only comes of years of knowledge and fondness, mouthing 'So has yours..'. Except truth be known I do not know you nor you I and the years have seen nothing but silence.
The time when I was on a train and you took me aside, from nowhere, urging me to come with you. Your hair the same.
Somewhere in here I keep rediscovering you and then forgetting again. Those moments of loneliness when you quietly resurface, whispering your significance to me, only to go again. Never loud, never real, but enough to keep you with me.
So I wonder whether when I think of you, or at least, when my mind conjures you up again, does something go off in your own heart. Is there a just the tiniest quiver of disturbance in the long night of slumber.
Just this face, mouthing at you, 'And so do you.'

2006-01-24T17:26:00.000Z

I need to tell you something
Before the sound of war gets too much for me
I cannot believe that again
You are not who you should be,
I am desert life
And you are the ocean
Listen to the sound of me making everything ten times worse than they are
It is the sound of thunder in august.
We are so much alike
You and I,
Surely one day
All the pieces will be correct
And I will fall into place
I envy you your happiness
Your knowledge,
Your sexuality,
I wish I was perfect
And then I could run from you
Do I make you wonder about yourself?
Could there be an exception to the rule…
Love is blind
I need to tell you something

2006-01-15T18:29:00.001Z

All I know today is that I would like to say something profound and I don't think that I can. I think it's just going to have to be very simply put.
This is unprecendented misery. Not born of logic.
I think of last night and how much we laughed and how I save my laughter for you because every time we meet the time inbetween has been my dead pool.
I can feel how different my face feels. Like exercising for the first time and the muscles contract in surprise and of course unbridled joy. Laughter is laughter is laughter is such a good looking word and I can't comprehend how cruel it has been. Not with You.
So here what I would like to say is I think I am vaguely psychotic. If it is possible to be vaguely anything so strong. Vaguely dead. Kind of evil.
No the realisation. Not the right word. Too gradual, too all consuming, too every part of who I am for so long. The knowledge that there are no conclusions. No happy endings, there is no end. Until the ultimate one. I cannot cope with the passing of time with every moment being gone as I am standing in it. I am in the past.
So what happened? What dreadful thing to cause the psychosis, the hatred, the bitterness. And all I can say is nothing. just another deeply ordinary existence not quite timed in to the world's unwritten, unfathomable. incomprehensible, inside out, relentless laws. I am so lucky. So gulity. I thought this sadness could go. That misery, which I always believed to be an eloquent emotion, could only be fleeting and would come to pass.
All emotions are enviable until you have them. Even love. Take your love.

2006-01-15T18:13:00.000Z

What must it be like to be happy?
To have goodness sat at your door
Waiting patiently for you to arrive.
Good is happy before you question the equation.
If my heart was good and this head less angry
So I would.

lucid thoughts pouring round.
My bells of unadulterated clarity
Sounding their gong.
Not Yet.

Yet says potential and we are done with that
upwards and onwards outwards and under
far far under

So says the bad mind where is death when you need her
And the sad heart says do we have to so soon?
Is there not yet time?
So gruesome replies 'collect yourself and you will see
The patterns of evil collide'

So misery holds herself knowing that it is done
That with each coming breath darkness will come
Till we are gone.

2006-01-09T16:13:00.000Z

I see a face that looks like yours
It has ‘dead at 45’ written all over it,
I am moving stuff out of the room so I could leave
There are cigarette papers everywhere
Heightening the loss (of good health).
Taking a trip to the doctor,
Safe in the knowledge that you are in the child-stage of your life
Trapped in some reoccurring scenario
Involving your father, a secret and
A plan for self-destruction.
And me, I am just trapped everywhere I go,
I tell the doctor about the cigarette papers
He isn’t listening, he is asking me how many I’ve taken, 5, 8, 12....?
But this is so irrelevant, I cast a spell -
I need a myrtle plant, one for each side of the door,
And something you’ve touched and broken...
I ask the doctor how much for a heart-removal operation?
He calls for assistance.
There are two nurses now and 14 needles hovering in mid-air above me,
I apologise for lying on the floor,
Knowing this is unusual doctor-visiting etiquette
But these are difficult times, after all
The needles disappear
I cut my label off, I write an essay:
‘There’s no such thing as mental health’
I alert the pentagon - new levels of anxiety have been found in the UK
I explain to the faces,
‘I’m not normally like this but I’ve just lost someone…6 million years ago,
My inner child has been kidnapped
I may never see her again
It’s no huge disaster, I’ve just had all hope taken from me
That’s all’
I find a photograph in a drawer of a sunset
It is now years later
And the losses pile up,
Like lorries on the bypass...
No more doctors now
But needles all the same
Pins and needles
I kiss my own hand to see if it makes a difference
To see what it feels like to be loved
But I may never know
There is nothing,
Suddenly I am talking to you at 1.30 in the morning about everything
You are saying that you want to fall asleep talking to me, better than being alone
And who'd have thought it?
After everything...
I am thinking, this is epic
It would make a terrible film but it's my life
And the story goes on

2006-01-04T21:37:00.000Z

New Year

Online, 2 am
Talking to P about what love is
‘Love is when you look into someone’s eyes and suddenly you go all the way inside, to their soul and you both know instantly.’
P laughs at me cos when the best quotes you ever heard were from a TV show
You watched when you were 15, you know
Life is bad but
I am trying to have a good year
3 days in and my eyes are sore
And I am bleeding from the womb down
Thinking about the child inside
Thinking about you lying in a hospital bed dying over someone else
One day someone will want to die at the thought of losing me
And this will all be worth it,
(I didn’t really say that)
I can’t have another year like all the others
So take me to the clinic to get the needles in my skin
Hoping one day this anxiety will make me thin
What’s the worst thing that could happen?
That this could be one year on
Oh but it’s six years on - how could this have happened?
I get an email request to join a friends network from a guy I used to be in love with
Who is now going out with my good friend
Everything happens for a reason, (shut up)
January is the month my heart breaks
‘Stay in touch with your long lost friends’
But I’m not long and I’m not lost,
I have always been here,
It’s the rest of the world that disappears!
I fake a smile.
IRONY is not even a word
Anymore
INJUSTICE is not even a word
Anymore
They mean nothing

2005-12-20T14:33:00.000Z

She

Everything is wrong with this.
You are so young...
When I was your age I was
Breaking men’s hearts because of something I didn’t understand inside me
That didn’t feel quite right
And carving my body with kitchen utensils
And begging doctors to
Please give me something to
Make it all go away
And you are the person I wish I was or think I was
Back then.
What have you done to me?
I was ok without you to prove to me
Something I haven’t listened to properly, until now…
Everything is wrong.
My heart is old,
My body is crippled and ugly,
You are the first snowdrop of spring under a velvet new moon
You must never know…
Everything is wrong with me.

2005-12-07T22:13:00.000Z

We are sat in my living room and I can't quite look at you
'It's been like this a long time' and I want to say 'for always' but instead
'About a year now..'
I can trust you but I can't trust myself to say this in a way that won't reveal how dark it is inside
And it is.

We are in your living room and I am on the sofa adjacent to yours.
This used to be your sofa and you are on mine
You say 'we're going on holiday for 3 weeks at Christmas' and I remember
When Christmas was you and me and them.

It's been better in so many ways.
So many uncountable, indefinable ways.
How weeks can pass without argument or crying or disgust.
So why isn't it?

This is where we are now.
Locked in our separate lives, now and then visiting each other's.
I will continue to covet your independent, lonely state of mind
And you will..what will you?
Will you see who I am and what we could have been?
Or is that my own friendly delusion.

2005-12-01T16:53:00.000Z

I loved a man once without knowing anything about him.
He was beautiful, his boyfriend was not
I was at university in Leicester, I was trying to forget the pain that I had left at home,
When I saw him, I just knew.
He used to stare at me until I had to meet his eye across the dance floor
Of the dingy rock club we went to every weekend,
He would stare at me until he had to let go of his partner and meet me halfway amongst the thrashing bodies spasmodically moving to bloodcurdling screams and electric guitars
I was told his name was Nick, that was all I knew
That and he wore the same eye shadow as my housemate
We knew that because he told her once - silver rhino,
He wore PVC skirts and had blue plastic in his braids
He was what was known as a Cyber-Goth, I think they are a dying breed now...
When we kissed, always without talking first or after,
It was like connecting with another part of myself I didn’t know existed
If he was in the room I could tell without seeing,
For a year we carried out this bizarre relationship
Without words, we would abandon who we were with and like magnets
We would be together, holding hands
Whilst DNA went crazy inside us begging to be united,
Just standing before each other and looking into the others eyes
He was the only man who made me forget you...
On the night before I had to leave to return to my old life down south
I said to him, ‘I’m leaving tomorrow’ and
He mimed a single tear running down his cheek with his finger
Then he held me tightly and we were seperated by life.
I will never know what actually happened, what he felt or whether he remembers me now
But I will always wonder

2005-11-17T19:50:00.000Z

It is shooting season
And all around is the sound of death
For hours in the winter afternoon -
The gun shots in the fields,
The feathers in flight
In the woods - the calls of parents to their young

Later, in the blood red glow of the dusk
I step out into the stillness of the killing fields,
To listen to the eerie silence,
And to feel the sadness once again...
I’m so sorry, I am simply lost for words

2005-11-08T21:05:00.000Z

I run for hours
With only one thought
To leave this place to leave this place
If I keep running will
The weight fall away from me
And the light enter?
No
You are still everywhere
The taste of you on my insides
Your face in a cupboard in my heart,
With the words ‘Wanted Dead or Bleeding’
Underneath it.
Take a sip
And watch me shrink
I am not going to be straight with you
This is all an act
Or is it
I am in bed with the boy with the Kurt Cobain complex
Listening to Jimi Hendrix
He tries to understand
5 years too late 5 years too late
I just don’t know
Is the answer
I still don’t know
But sometimes I go back to the attic
With the man with the hands and the obsession
And the beautiful eyes
He is teaching me everything I need to know for my adult life
That I must be punished for
Being different
And that beauty will not last
And all is suffering
Looking down on myself
I feel like I have always known
This would happen
I hear my clothes rip
And now I know for certain

2005-10-16T21:11:00.000+01:00

At your wedding,
Watching the flickers of our childhood fade into unreality
In the disco lights and moving limbs,
Your life without me going on everywhere I look…
I am in a parallel world,
Watching a small woman walking alone, shoulders shaking, by the moat,
Away from the marquee of reunions, as the party rages on inside,
She finds herself on the seat surrounded by mirrors forcing her to cruelly observe the frailty and the Collapse,
Look at what has become, what has become of you?
My closest friend, unaware - did you even see?
Her parents struggling to carry their single, 26 year old daughter home
Because she has compressed into a small ball from
The weight of the darkness inside.
My best friend, I never dreamed our adulthood would be like this but I am so happy to have known you, on this day
And see your beauty
Only -I shouldn’t be here so I follow the young girl back to the past, to her family home
Where you used to come and play, do you remember?
My only friend, our games and the dance routines and the endless waiting
All the years waiting - you and me and nobody,
And now you wait no more.
Be still my aching heart. You are happy.
God bless you, stick together like glue, like glue….
Stick to God (like you couldn’t stick to me) the vicar says, I am completely alienated.
I am screaming inside ‘this is all a lie’, there is no love.
And the rest of my life is the seat by the mirrors, the darkness inside and you smiling in black and white.
Maybe we shall never meet again.

2005-10-13T23:14:00.000+01:00

A Brief History of Lesbianism

In the Dark Room, with your back to me
The curve of your shoulder blades moving as you work,
Your white skin soft in the redlight,
The delicate, thin straps of your black top...
I am seeing you for the first time and
You, just metres away,
Completely unaware that everything has just changed for me

2005-10-09T20:33:00.000+01:00

Today it wasn't a surprise to know that I was home. It's not just when I walk into the hallway and Ben comes bounding up to me, mum in the kitchen with this smile that I never remember from the homecomings of before (university, school residentials, christian camp, holidays..), did I maybe not notice, did I just not want to see it in my indignant teenage years where anywhere that doesn't allow you to stay out till 4 in the morning no questions asked is a bad place (not that she ever did..how I failed to notice that, this ridiculous tolerance, born of trust, apathy, innocence, I do not know). No it's not just that moment when I'm physically home, when a kitchen really is the hub of life and not some bar in this strange scottish town I have named My Life. Far more than that. It's reaching the A34 and knowing that within 30 minutes I can start to breathe a little more easily again. That soon I will start to cry and know that I have wanted to for so long and not really known how - not till I'm in the thing that I miss that I can start to miss and love it properly. Not even that. It's turning left at the roundabout and knowing that I can take myself into Oxford without having to daydream it and see you. See now you are fast becoming my muse and I didn't even realise it. I walked into the shop and had that moment of seeing you as a person that I don't know, just before it is apparently obvious that of course I could never not recognise or forget you. You look so pretty, all stripes and curls and I wonder (again) how you don't know it. I am ashamed because I'm wearing nike trainers that surely flounce our code. Anyway I'm going to go now and not make you scared that I am talking at you when you're not here. Off to think about how I am to solve the conundrum of wanting this life where love is just a given and not something that you have to sit and wait for.

2005-10-07T21:45:00.000+01:00

Unconditional

I'm looking into the mirror at my changed reflection
24 and in the years to come many more faces will stare back at me
No recognition beyond what once was 5 maybe 6 years ago.
Did you hold this mirror in your 35 year old hands, finding a place to fit it on the wall barely noticing your reflection
for a couple of seconds your eyes have stopped, you notice narcissistically the greatness of your own gaze, how it's unwittingly seductive and right now it's seducing you.
did you know then that one day you'd walk past this mirror with a plate of chocolate fancies and see the old lady on the other side
she has set white hair she is grandiose she is old.
you hand the fancy to me thinking 'you have so many years ahead of you and you don't even know it. you don't see age, you see moments and sensations that become you or flit unseen into the debris of life past. Each moment that I am giving you could make you what you will become.'

The house is a tardis. no really it is! Believe me.
This dull 1950s exterior gives way to ooh, a deceptively large (sic) home.
Here you will find a fitted kitchen 25ft by 20ft, backing onto an enclosed and charmingly maintained courtyard. 3 large double bedrooms, the dining room has the potential to become a fourth bedroom. If you spend long enough staring at the blue reception room carpet you might be able to pretend that it is the sea and upstairs in shell pink bedroom number one is a handy little corner that nicely fits young children pretending that they are homeless under duvets on a Saturday morning.

The box hedge fills me once again it is the scent of summer it is the hint of grandma and grandpa. Grandma offers me a cake she asks me about the school play I say 'I was Laura, I was the main part.' and don't mention that school is my own private hell because here it could be anything I want it to be. It is my own creation for you because you don't need to know because somehow you love me.

I kiss you on the head.
It is older and warmer than I can ever remember.
I say 'I will come tomorrow' and somehow I don't.
I've packed my suitcase. It's 9 o'clock I can't miss my flight I must be off.
I have made grandma's bed.
So that's me. I'm gone.

But in this place I like to call my soul I hold on to you
I lie in the sun under the weeping willow where I will be forever
You hand me a plate with many delights of afternoon tea
I do not think of my body, calories or the gym
I am under the tree and You are with me.

2005-10-06T21:57:00.000+01:00

To wake up one morning, alone in my head.
No arguments. No voices. Just me.

There is this point just before I reach the end of the hedge
And suddenly I realise, out of context, without the voices clamouring for attention ‘but you know it’s just you and no-one else’, ‘you know it’s a feeling and it will pass’
(oh yes, but that will certainly come)
That I need you mummy.
Just here where the building looms with my classroom beautifully placed at the top.

Just here by this car tyre while I sob into my red velvet skirt and there’s a bluey grey t-shirt (god I’d forgotten, how did I ever forget?) Just here where the floor could not be any harder and I haven’t quite fallen through it.
Yet.

What I would like is to sit in her convertible
(A sentence I endeavour to write without irony)
Yes, I would like to sit in her convertible and not be afraid to catch sight of
My reflection in the wing mirror.
I can tell you all the best places for looking younger.
Rearview mirror. Check. Bathroom mirror. Check. Just never by an open window.

So this morning I woke up
No silly..
So this..So in the middle of the night I woke up with this glorious feeling.
Till I remembered that I am still me.

No no. Let’s get this straight.
I do not think that I am ugly.
You think that I am ugly and I have come to believe you.

I try out compliments.
Remember the compliments and forget the insults.
Remember when she said ‘You are an angel’
It rode with me for days. She said ‘you are an angel’
So I placed it with my anger and this terrible hatred and I knew…

Pithy, self-induced loathing,
My personal favourite.

What you will never know
Is the sound of your voice.
‘I am at the bottom of the garden with the owls around me’
Now that is truly the sound of an angel.
She says ‘but she is much nicer..’ and I know she feels guilty, but we are sisters
‘She is such an entertainer..’ there’s this glow that I see, like when He first met you. He says with this look of surprise ‘The only one I’ve met like my friends at home. That wit..’

And I’m worried that you’ll never know.
That you’ll always be like me when you don’t deserve it.
How you may never see that anyone can smile
Really anyone can.
But I could never believe in it like I can in you.
Let me elaborate
The first time I met you..

Patch of grass next to the languages block
You are sat with your legs stretched out in front of you
(He says a couple of years later ‘Like the Immac lady’ and you giggle with the raw pleasure of someone so much in love)
You have the longest blackest hair and I say
‘You are the nicest person in the world’

2005-09-21T21:20:00.000+01:00

I am talking to you tonight and I am upset, I have that feeling in my gut like I'm about to be shot in the heart. I sense something will happen, as I talk to you I am thinking that I can't breathe. Then you tell me you're leaving and I'm shot. 'I was about to leave' you say. Bang. Blood everywhere. 'Where are you going?' I say, all cool and unshot. 'I don't know, the sea, somewhere that isn't here feeling crap'. A wave of grief. Go on leave me again. Just like everyone - so many irrational thoughts?! Must ignore them. Calmly I tell you this sounds like a cool idea. I don't think it does. I don't know what a cool idea would sound like right now. I have just decided not to do something that may have been really beneficial for my career and future happiness (happiness is always in the future). I clearly wouldn't know a cool idea if it came up and smacked me in the face. And I worry about you so much. Too much. I worry that you'll try to kill yourself again and succeed. I worry that you'll go to India and never come back. I worry that I might bump into you. I worry that I won't. I worry that you'll get a girlfriend and I'll choke on the injustice. I worry that you'll suddenly say you love me. I worry that you won't ever realise you love me. I worry that one day I'll love someone else and it won't be you. And who the hell are you to me? You aren't my lover, you aren't even really my friend, I don't know what you are. But you are in my nervous system and my heart and everything I am and have become. You are in me so deep down and in my very centre that before you I don't know what I based anything else on or compared anything else to. Before you, there was nothing. I had to build a separate temple inside myself for you and there you stay. And always will. I wish I could go somewhere like you. I wish I could go with you and be ok. This is a myth of mine I tell myself in my darkest hour - that basically one day I will be ok and I can exist around you normally - that choosing you to love wasn't the biggest error of judgment of my entire life. I hope you come back soon.

2005-09-18T20:30:00.000+01:00

You say you don't remember this but it happened, it is a friday night, we are young.We have probably been kicked out of every pub we've tried to enter. We are high on something, LIFE. We are walking the streets, I don't even know how long I have known you but I feel like I have known you forever as soon as I meet you anyway so this is irrelevant. We are hand in hand, feeling invincible. What's the world about? We have no idea but things feel possible and completely impossible too. We lie down and laugh at the sky, we are lying on the pavement, you, me and the stars and the street lights and nothing. A man approaches us and tries to pursuade us to stand up, apparently lying down in public is not a good thing. Apparently it goes against medical advice. We know this because the man says, 'come on girls, stand up - this isn't funny, I'm a doctor!' Which is odd cos before he told us he was a doctor we hadn't found it funny that he was. Now we do. A small crowd gathers. The doctor fails to talk us up, he leaves, we are laughing like lunatics and the sky is huge and endless above us. It's just you and me and the pavement and the stars and all our onlookers and the doctors who don't understand. I learnt something that night, I learnt that doctors don't know what they're talking about, I also learnt that the smallest actions can make an impact and seperate you from the masses. But mostly I learnt that it's you and me against the world.