kinds of kindness

I haven’t picked up a book to read all month. there will always be excuses to make and other ways to spend my time. some nights I feel lonely and do nothing about it. sometimes the faces of people I love on my screen is the closest I’ll get to a hug. in wishing for more I roll my eyes at the face in the mirror, aware of what I have had and how lucky and cursed I am to remember.

tonight I will walk to the theatre and buy a ticket for a film I have already seen. I will sit and fall into the screen and live somewhere else til the credits roll. away from me and my phone, someplace I’ve been but don’t really know, faces of actors familiar enough to feel safe and important. the movie is about our human dependence on the approval and affection of others. on the big screen it hangs some of the dark and nasty stuff we do our best to keep in shadows or boxes in corners under our beds. I won’t think about myself or what I lack or the future I don’t want to see for a couple of hours. this is good and I am fortunate.

Mum started back at work today. less than two weeks since her mother’s death and business as usual. we give ourselves such little space for breath and feeling. 

‘infinite void’

 to know you is to lose you

on the shelf at the shop there’s a box and it’s red

on the lid someone’s written ‘infinite void’

though the abyss is locked

there’s a key at its feet

and you’ll open and see

nothing more than a shell

like the mirror and me

empty promises and space that wasn’t held

all red inside and full of air

a lot of nothing everywhere

the lack of closure

a joke you missed

a laugh you thought you’d always know

the party’s over

and weren’t they right?

aren’t you a fool?

left wanting more than metaphor

and laughing at the moron

opening empty boxes

and looking for hope in the charity store.

songs I should like

I had hoped I might have made the time to think about what and how I should be feeling by now, but I’ve hardly found a moment to be alone. this shouldn’t surprise me. I see the pattern and have drawn lines between the dots: I fear my own company. every distraction afforded me by somebody else is a gift, regardless of how it might wind up making me feel. thinking realistically, I’ve not forced myself to sit with my thoughts for long enough to tie them to ink on a page in the book hiding in the back of my desk drawer in over half a year. I can run in the dark and sing in front of a hundred strangers on a stage. what actually matters if I can’t even sit with myself?

I sit at the departure gate with my phone and 51 minutes. maybe I’ll call a friend or text someone I shouldn’t. my phone absentmindedly shuffles songs I should like. I’ll scroll until it’s time to go.

purple crane

we buried Nonna today. I think I’ll have more to write about this but there needs to be some space and time for thinking. Mum read the eulogy with pride. after communion, the cantor sang the hymn Mum and I both want sung at our funerals. I wept like a baby. they asked me to lead the procession to the hearse with the framed photo - Nonna smiling on her 90th birthday just six months ago. I left a purple crane on the coffin before walking down the aisle.

more thoughts maybe later. listening to my brother now. I’ll try to be present.

tumbling monkeys

there is always more work. I sit at the breakfast bench in my aunty’s kitchen. we used to sit on the same stools as we waited for pancakes and played tumbling monkeys. I fall into the screen and attend to my tasks. progress on one makes another emerge. I respond to emails and schedule meetings and Mum writes the eulogy at the dining table behind me. she asks me what I think and I think that she’s done a good job.

by the time we close our screens and leave the house for air what’s left of the sun is only just enough for a walk by the creek. I couldn’t see the carriage of the freight train. for a moment I saw shipping containers gliding down the stream. my aunty asks if I still go to church. she only goes sometimes. Mum asks her questions about the last few days with Nonna. we’re all glad she went peacefully. I want to look through albums but my eyes are feeling heavy.

I woke up sweating between dreams that made me tired. this house is warm and I think my body has acclimatised to sleeping in the cold. Mum says I was twitching in my sleep. apparently the cat does the same. I don’t know why but it doesn’t really matter. 

treasures, odds and ends

the meeting room we booked had no windows. I played resident young person on staff so I could catch the sun on coffee runs to the cafe outside. by time I boarded my train home the sky was dark. we don’t really see stars up here, so the canvas lacks a lot of what I appreciate about it back home. I listen to the same rotation of songs that seem to echo whispers of connection to feelings and thoughts that occupy my heart and mind. the lyrics and melodies wrap me softly into brief stillness, a blanket of comfortable melancholy.

I am tired from the long day of being on and present for tasks and people I don’t really know or understand. on the phone I listen to somebody I love and wish I could be doing more that offering my ears and thoughts. I pack my bags for an early flight and figure I don’t have space for a sketchbook. there won’t be much time for drawing, though when will there ever be?

I choose clothes to wear to a funeral of someone who knew me before I was born. my colleagues ask me to give their best to Mum. she is in their thoughts. I don’t want to imagine how it might feel to prepare for her funeral. the occupation slaughtered more than seventy in a humanitarian zone just minutes after ordering evacuation. will there ever be funerals for the forty thousand martyrs? how am I meant to hold faith in a human project that talks more about the mirror than the mass murder of children? do answers exist? when will I stop looking?

I carry heavy eyes and feelings. I am a canvas bag of expired goods and half charged batteries. an accumulation of potential treasures, odds and ends. I sink into the pillow and see myself in dreams. 

the cat ate it

I spoke to Jenae on the phone tonight. she told me about her week and how much she loves her family. it’s been nearly two months since she left the city now, though it’s felt much longer. she spoke about people feeling like home. I thought about how this place felt a lot more like home when she was around. she asked about me and made space for me to respond. Jenae listens with a want to understand rather than respond for the sake of conversation. hearing her voice makes the night a little warmer. her kindness makes me feel like I deserve to take up the space I occupy. her love helps me forget how small and insignificant I feel in my own company.

my grandma called to ask for an address Dad told me he’d scribed for her twice. she’d lost the paper and spent all day looking. I told her the cat told me he’d eaten it.

I play with silly ideas like dominoes in my mind. mostly chaotic hypotheticals. mostly products of boredom and a fear of being still. I toy with ghosts and write unruly alternatives to the way things went. their voices long forgotten, faces all too familiar - still branded to the walls inside my head. a skull full of haunted memories I refuse to bury. I play with the past and hide from today.

fickle

at the rally I am absorbed into something bigger than myself. for a couple of hours my anger connects me to the masses around me. we march through the city and shout. we reject the reality we are told to accept by the fracturing powers that be. my voice chants along and I am not my thoughts but something safer and stronger. children sing proudly through the megaphones. demands for justice and an end to state funded massacres. onlookers film on their phones and talk to each other. some smile and wave. I see the back of the head of a ghost. he’s marching just ahead of me. he sings along and shouts the same words and for a moment we are both parts of the same choir.

I run as the sun settles. when I shower before dinner I think of how I’d hoped to have spent my time between days at my desk. I’ve not touched my sketchpad or guitar. the story I’m trying to write has sat dormant for weeks on my digital desktop. there will always be an excuse. I’ll blame Nonna this time, until something else comes along and sends me off course. it can never be my own fickle fear of failure or inability to be still. it is always out of my control. I can recognise the parasite in the mirror, though I can’t stop feeding it.

in bed I wrap my arms around myself and listen to artificial rain on my phone. I worry about the people I love and run away from thinking critically about how and where I’m going. I close my eyes and hope I’ll dream.

colour

I fill every moment with sound or movement. space can only hurt me if it’s empty. and so I swing from one day to the next, doing all I can to fill the page with anything but time for stillness. sometimes the lines are colourful. in these moments I forget the purpose they serve to distract from the fault in the organ in my skull. I see a cat on the pavement on my walk home, or hear from someone I love, or feel the final rays on the back of my neck after work. there is colour and it finds me even when I’m hiding.

I dream of days I’ll never live and wake to winter again. a world of ghosts and tasks and consequence. I see them on my screens and on the street. I collect excuses to justify my perpetual mourning and build the case for why I’m broken. when I wake I read the news and laugh at the way I am. I think of everyone who needs love more and go to work again.

bad weeds

I opened my phone after a meeting to a message from Mum saying that Nonna had passed peacefully. I would have been having a conversation about image choices for a research training slide deck when it happened. my first thought was to tell my colleague I mightn’t be able to attend a workshop in person next week, depending on the date of the funeral. the practical takes the wheel. I leave the heart in the backseat for now.

I called Mum when she woke. she grieves in the village where her mother was born. her cousins are with her. Dad and Isaiah too. I want to hug her and cry into her shoulder, to have her cry with me. next week I will hold her hand and watch them lower her mother into the soil right beside the spot they chose for her father so long ago. I remember wondering why everyone was sad. apparently I ran a matchbox car up his arm in the hospital. ‘look Nonno, what do you think of my car?’ I didn’t know he had stopped breathing. I could still see him.

I was lucky to see her last month. she laughed a lot and kissed me on the cheek. her favourite saying in her final years was ‘bad weeds never die’. Dad said she must have been a flower. if there’s peace to be found anywhere, I hope she’s there now.

keeping up

I met a friend at an Italian restaurant for dinner. they had disappeared about a year ago with no explanation. a present tense friendship evaporated into silence. worry manifested in numerous failed attempts at reaching out. a chain of unacknowledged messages and unanswered calls. our lack of mutual friends meant I had no way of really knowing what was going on. I thought they might have moved. sometimes I worried something bad had happened, or I had maybe upset them somehow. I missed them and wished I could see them again.

I was caught off guard by their text. seeing them in person and realising that everything had been okay was even more of a shock. we played the game of smiles and pleasant conversation. they avoided eye contact where they could. I couldn’t keep up with the masking and ended up asking why they’d disappeared. they didn’t have an answer and apologised. they’re moving to Amsterdam in two weeks. a course they’ve had their eyes set on for years. they wanted to know about how I’ve been but I struggled to play along. they invited me to get a drink with their friends, who were in a pub across the road. apparently the friends were excited to meet me. I was honest and said I needed to honour how I have been feeling. I cried in front of them and they held my hand over the table. they struggled to look at me and apologised. I seemed to hurt them by failing to hide the hurt that they had caused me. we hugged goodbye outside the pub across the road. I don’t know if I’ll see them again.

my aunty is by my grandmother’s bed at the hospital. she was blunt on the phone, saying it’s best I stay where I am and remember Nonna the way she was when I last saw her. mum cried on the phone. she’s half a world away in the village where Nonna was born. they’ll hold a vigil for her, nieces and nephews and distant relations. comfort for mum in the midst of the storm. I feel a little helpless with nothing to give. words are fickle and mean nothing when it’s time to say goodbye. 

waiting room

I was in a waiting room at a health clinic. they called your name and I realised I hadn’t booked my appointment. you came in soon after and didn’t know they were waiting for you, so you sat on the other end of the couch. I felt you turn to catch my eye a couple of times. I tried to steal a glance of my own but you caught me. you smiled and slid across the couch a little closer. this is when I knew I was dreaming. I leant into the cradle of your shoulder and neck and I rested my head there.

I wake to heavy eyes and the ice around my neck and I pull myself into a day in the screen on a desk in a room on my own. there are tasks that I complete and others I’ll need to come back to. I hydrate and present myself to virtual meetings. I smile at the right times and make myself useful where I can. the sun passes over and disappears and it’s been another day without going outside. I read the news and wash myself in a home with food and blankets and I am safe and that is lucky.

my grandmother is in the hospital. we don’t know how serious it is, but it should be enough to remind me of the insignificance of everything else. mum is in another hemisphere. on the phone she said she was okay but I know it’s not that simple. we put everything we have into living. it’s no wonder we don’t know how to do death.

invisible ink

a day can fly and feel like a lifetime. I can laugh and cry til the ink runs. food nourishes and frightens me. figures motivate and devastate. silence is deafening. more deaths bring more life to the streets. some kind of irony; unbalanced scales. the back and forth today and tomorrow again. something means something if I care enough to make it. maybe some other time.

band-aid

I reach for one distraction after another. there is comfort in diverting my attention away from where and who I am right now. I sit at meals across from friends and ask about their day and how they’re managing and if they’re finding enough time for themselves. sometimes we talk about silly things. we reduce disappointments and lingering sadness to punchlines and laugh. the way I feel about myself occupying space in this strange mode of existence slips out of focus. I call friends I love to hear their voices, desperate to hear anything they’ll offer, to feel a little closer to them and further from the web I fall into between the distractions I stack haphazardly on the list on my desk every day. on a good day I bounce from one to the next with ease. the spiders can’t keep up. with luck I manage hours without listening to myself.

I think about what this means for the long term and committing to this project. can I ever stop and sit in stillness without spiraling into danger? will J always be a hazard to myself? at this point these questions lack answers, which is okay. I will finish writing and slip back into something else. there will be news to read or a task to complete. I will sleep and dream and wake to reports of the deaths of more children whose pain I will never have the strength to truly comprehend. and I will work and busy myself with everything bar my own thoughts and reflection in the mirror. safe and comfortable. a band-aid is always enough for now.

in my feed

I slept in peace whilst they killed another ninety innocents using weapons my tax has funded. a refugee camp this time. the figures have stopped shocking me, which is scary in itself. it is normal to see images of dead children on my phone. they live in my feed between targeted ads and the posed candids of people I used to know. I am no longer surprised by the gore. lost limbs and heads bleeding onto the pavement. mothers weeping over the remains of their children in the apocalyptic remains of a city they’d called home. dog videos and throwbacks. progress pics and new haircuts. someone in America tried to shoot a rapist. there will be more said about this in the weeks to come than we’ve heard about the 180 thousand innocents massacred at the hands of the white Western bloc since October. I bottle my anger and try to understand why we remain silent in the face of everything we’re taught is wrong.

at the rally we wore black and painted our hands red to honour the martyrs. we marched through the streets and the crowds gathered, looking on silently. some took photos or filmed. others looked away. there is always an easier path to take. I saw the ghost again. we nearly brushed shoulders in the current of people marching. on the phone to a friend I saw them once more across the same street as last night. I wonder if they saw me and I hate that I care. 

I think about tomorrow and how every Monday rolls into chaos right now. it’s a deep breath and tumble until Friday afternoon spits me out in a state too tired to write or think seriously about pretty much anything. this is what we work for. there could be more and maybe I’ll see the path clearer in time. I’m just not quite there yet.

nothing matters when I’m sleeping

blurred memories of a recent dream. somewhere in the city in the afternoon. passing someone I once held and loved without saying a word. I used to mean something to them. they showed me with more than just words. now they can’t look at me in a dream.

I took myself on the train to a market. I was meant to visit with a friend last week but couldn’t make time. dozens of racks of second hand clothes. five shirts with the same print: ‘fast fashion will kill the planet’. six shirts with bold letters reading ‘fully vaxxed’.

walking home from dinner with a friend I saw a ghost across the road. I feel small again. jarring to witness beyond the confines of my insecurities. we occupy the same spaces sometimes. it means nothing in the scheme of things. a thought or a feeling in the face of the burning hill. I’ll turn off the light and soon forget. nothing matters when I’m sleeping.

zoom out

I hung out my laundry between meetings today. one of the ginger cats was watching from the fence, where they usually sit with their friend to judge my technique. this time the cat slunk down into our yard. I crouched and offered my hand. at first cautious, the cat welcomed the attention, circling me with its tail, falling into my strokes and sprawling content on the pavement. the fur was soft and charged with the warmth of the sun from a yard less obscured by branches. I thought of the cat I grew up with and missed home.

some nights when I’m alone I try to watch a movie, but I can never tell if I like the film - even if I know it’s good. this isn’t a problem when I’m experiencing a movie with someone else. can I not muster my own opinions independent of those around me? am I so dependent on the validation of others that I can’t even speak to my own thoughts and feelings? does this matter in the scheme of how many children die tonight?

I zoom out as soon as I face an uncomfortable reflection. I am a fraud but the planet’s on fire. nothing matters from such a distance. I take the easy way out.

nomadic

I find home alone in the space between places and people I want to be. every day I catch the wind knowing not where it’s been or who it’s touched. it doesn’t matter and I want it to. Gaza is a graveyard and I want more attention. a lot of blood on the big screen. stories that might make more sense next time. I fall asleep in the movie theatre and wake up on the train. nothing forever. everything nomadic. 

they bombed another school

my knuckles are cold and so are my toes. the rest of my body feels okay, though my joints are tired. in the office my eyelids feel heavy and I know that a little more sleep wouldn’t hurt. I drink coffee now and stay at my desk later than I have to. I play adult and sometimes convince even myself that I know what I’m doing, and why. it makes sense when I don’t think too much about it. I walk to the train as the sun is rising: it goes to bed as I start to make my way home.

I chop rosemary from the bush growing by the curb down the road. it seasons the food in my pan. I eat and it is good for me. sometimes the people I love remind me that I shouldn’t be searching for reasons to do what is right for myself. they tell me they care about where I’m going, even when I can’t quite do this myself. I am embarrassed by the thought of taking up more space, even in somebody’s mind - all despite my pathetic hunger for attention. human or parasitic? are we all a little bit of both? they bombed another school and I still care how I’m perceived.

already half past the year that was new. where am I now? has anything really changed? have I even tried moving forward? do I want to be brave? do I just drift and fish for more reasons to hurt?

there’s a mirror in the hallway now. I hope it breaks and makes a mess.

ego forever

I fall from my dreams to a state of awake, until which point I’ve passed through the frames of fluid states of being. when my eyes open to the soft grey of my bedroom ceiling I forget anything else was ever possible. this is the world I’ve learnt. I know where I am and how I’m meant to be. I’m not what I dreamt, but what I’ve somehow always known myself to be.

on my phone I scroll through names and faces and taunt myself with digital histories and accounts of relationships confined to archived message threads of affirmation and affection. I feel inadequate and forgotten despite the love I am spoiled with and dependent on. ‘look at me.’ I feel pathetic to feed the parasite and wish I’d never opened my phone.

I hear Jenae read the news at 9:30 as I tap away at the keys into something I can’t remember. she is on the radio reporting on what is happening in the world over there. this is her job now. as I type into the liminal space that is the cloud above laptop I listen to the voice of my friend on the radio and I am proud of somebody I love with my whole heart whilst I am writing an email about project administration. something important and something so small and aimless and monotonous and it’s all happening at once. I hold onto the special thing. my friend is on the radio. I have a friend to love.

and still I cry for more. the greed dwarfs the gratitude every time. still dreaming of a way to slay the dragon. ego always wins.  

monuments

I wake up before my alarm sometimes (like today). when I sleep on the top bunk and the air around the exposed skin of my neck isn't so icy I feel a subliminal disconnect from the floor. it's as though the day that the climb to my pillow is something more than physical: the day that has been - whatever tasks I've used to distract myself and suck up my time - is left behind on the floor. when I make it to my mattress I don't think of any of the tools and tricks I've used to avoid thinking all day. before I fall asleep I meet my mind again. thoughts return. I recall what I've been running from and force myself to be still. often a difficult thing. but I feel the weight of emotions I've zipped close for work or friends or my own sanity and I breathe in relief. I am not a robot. memories and thoughts mean something.

at work I live in the screen and follow through on promises and tasks, many conceived and completed without ever manifesting in spoken words. sometimes I make the grade and earn smiles and thanks. other times tasks are delegated elsewhere and I am left wondering what more I could have done, though it's never personal and, were this not the case, I doubt I'd really mind. I press the keys and type the minutes and smile at the right times. I am lucky to live in the safe and calm stability of employment. my parents ask about work and I remind myself that my desk-bound days go somewhere. the work stands for something. by association I guess I can say the same for me.

my parents called me from a car. they were driving through Corsica with a friend who lived in our house for half a year. we studied together past midnight most nights. I listen to the music that underscored our evenings and I miss what was once the normal I took for granted. during lockdown I'd drive to the shops with my brother at night. braving the cold and empty aisles for chocolate alone. the everyday means little in present tense. walking through the rain down the hill into TESCO. walking each other to the end of aimless errands just to escape our own reflections. precious and sacred and not so long ago. time makes monuments wherever I've been. I can only look back and smile.

what are we going to do with you?

there are days that present themselves as an assortment of tasks that. I am presented with a list and I embrace without question the directive. by time I make it to bed and slip into the illuminated depths of the screen, I feel the weight of the day on my frame. ticking box after box can feel like nothing in the moment. the routine is a blessing. but when I stop and I feel tired and the accumulated work of every minor distraction and conscious effort to distract my thoughts from myself and the world at large feels as though it's all for nought. I scroll my thumb on a shard of glass. we keep tabs of ghosts. we look at old photos and remember how it felt. we read that another school has been massacred whilst our government demonises a voice of reason standing in solidarity. we see lots of unsolicited pictures of dogs and breakfast.

yesterday I caught the bus over the bridge to visit a friend of my grandparents. he never had kids, and doesn't have any family living nearby. I used to be better at staying in touch, though I let things slip over summer in the midst of whatever we call this. he lives in a nursing home in a very nice and safe and probably expensive part of the city. there was nobody manning the reception desk. I thought I remembered where his room was and ended up in the lounge of the dementia ward. a man much younger than my grandparents but so much older than mum and dad approached me. he pointed with a trembling finger as he shook his head. 'what are we going to do with youu?' a nurse asked who I was looking for and pointed me in the right direction. when I got to his room, he was sleeping peacefully. I spent some time there, scanning the bookshelf (he was a passionate theatregoer when he was more mobile), taking a closer look at a lifetime's accumulation of trinkets that had survived the peril of spring clean after spring clean and the penultimate cleanse of downsizing from house to small room in expensive nursing home. he looked fragile as he slept. I thought of him as a figure of wisdom at Christmas lunches when I was a child. he gifted me 'the magician's nephew'. I wrote him an apology for not being able to talk, and caught the bus back home. he texted to apologise and was disappointed I hadn't woken him. I'll try again next weekend.

my friends call me and make everything a little warmer. for a moment things are less heavy. they invite me to nestle with them in their brains and we pick at the knots, trying to untie and make sense of something. it often gets nowhere but nowhere often means another excuse to call and that is not something I can ever take for granted. so many people I love navigating strange terrains. I wish I could hold them through the phone and make them tea.

my psychologist started working through my childhood. it's strange to talk about these things - so much I've never even dwelt on - with a stranger. only through being asked do I start to realise some moments and memories played a role in where and who and how I am today. we spoke about my cousins and playing with the other boys in the schoolyard and being too slow to be tagged in chasings. she listens and sometimes her questions are helpful without being profound.

I listen to the same lyrics over and over. sometimes I sing the sad ones loudly in the shower and I cry and it feels cathartic. there are pleasures in pain that I accumulate like jewels for my crown. 

my igloo

I sit in front of my computer at my desk and pour a day into a life I won’t think of until I start over again tomorrow. in the moment everything is pressing. there are competing priorities and I jump as high as required. I may be reluctant and lacking enthusiasm. I still dance when they tell me to. however they want. I’m theirs til it’s dark and the day’s gone and I can’t remember why I started. money comes through someday. I’ll use it for food and my igloo. come closing time I indulge in ritual exercise on the mat on the floor. I am tired after a day of pressing buttons.

before bed I call my parents. they are always happy to hear my voice. I relish feeling needed, if only from those who I’ve leant on since the day I first cried into this funny state of being. they say they miss me and wash me in the words of love and affirmation I’ve so desperately craved from the wrong people. somedays I recognise how lucky I am to be treasured by those responsible for my being here. more often I am ignorant. I think of those I wish would dream of the validation I’ve pathetically wasted myself hoping for from them.

it’s the birthday of someone who ran away. I don’t know where he is now, or what I did to scare him off. on rare occasions he still surfaces to the fore. we meant a lot at the time. big words like forever. too big for 17 and a boy with so many friends in so many places. years between whatever it was and no space for bitterness, just unanswered questions and the knowledge I’ll always hold the door for him. he would have done the same. (past tense).

I look in the mirror and laugh again. I am an alien in my body. the signal is poor but what about any of that actually matters? everything is temporary. we are fickle and fragile. read the news. we are the lucky ones.

fool's gold

my eyes are tired. I spend more time looking at illuminated screens than anything else. the day is an accumulation of digital exchanges. when I work from home I can spend an entire day without saying a word. sometimes I catch myself singing along to a song I didn't realise I enjoyed. maybe it reminds me of somewhere else or somebody or a moment in time. maybe the words resonate with something I've felt. maybe I just like the tune.

I hear my friends' voices on the phone. most of the people I love are out of reach. my phone lets me feel a little closer, though I miss being held. I take for granted how it feels to be occupying space with someone important whilst it's normal. someone important moves or disappears and it's only then with the lack of what was so easy and consistent that I realise how lucky I've been. longing for closeness is familiar to the point of comfort, though I still find home in friends around me. I am kept warm by the knowledge that I am loved and my love is treasured by some. I am embraced and forced to reassess how I've learnt to see myself. for some, I am not too much, no matter how I feel. 'I am who I am and I have the need to be'.

if I look close enough at anything I laugh a little inside at the realisation that it is my choice to make meaning or dismiss all that I witness and experience. the same goes for passing thoughts and feelings, at least I think. I make lists of what I lack, now including the discipline to let go of my parasitic dependence on validation and what it is about me that repels them when they look too closely. leaves in a stream. clouds in the sky. tracks I can skip if I don't want to sing. I rewrite poems on my phone to nurse my ego. 'I can still be who I want to be'.

wake up and open your eyes. the world is big and tired and burning and there is very little I can do. I hold on to what I have. I am lucky to be when others cannot. if I say it enough it can feel like the truth.

pistacchio

I decided to go to trivia but my team didn’t show. maybe I should pay more attention to my inbox. I drank the glass of house red I’d already queued for in a corner of the pool room. half an hour scrolling on my phone for a jacket they sold out of. I held one in my hands before the rally on Sunday. when they say ‘never too late’ it’s aspirational, although if it makes a difference, it’s not for for nothing. on the way out I was eavesdropping and heard the quizmaster confess to a patron she’s been in the job at the same pub for four years. I sleep in a room I’ve occupied for much longer than I should in light of its size and the claustrophobia of the cold and lack of space. shouting from next door, sarcastic voices and bitterness. the neighbours move out this month. they’ve lived in their house, identical to ours, long before I moved in. I hear him play trumpet and their arguments wake me up sometimes. it feels perverted to know so much about people I have never met. the girls never introduced me when I moved in. I guess things were busy. they always are.

every few sentences or thoughts or breaths I remember every ounce of anything I feel is my own. no matter the gravity of any experience, I will only ever have myself to keep on the same page and not miss the fine print. no matter the weight of any feeling, it is contained within my frame. a body that happens to exist somewhere peaceful and safe, with other bodies keeping me in mind and pulled by duty and varying degrees of love to check in and care. I am here. every few thoughts I remember the footage I see on my phone. the number of child martyrs and how many more today? the massacres I cry for until I look away because it’s alll too much for my fragile body. I walk this line and the slip into the sobering dystopia that is the reality beyond my bubble is a slap in the face every time.

I am still surprised and hurt and humoured and I still feel warm when I think of someone I love. the cogs still move. I chose pistacchio gelato and I missed home.

rain sounds

some nights I don’t need to play rain sounds from my phone to clear my head of thoughts. tonight we have real rain running down my window. tonight I wear winter pyjamas that stretch down my limbs. warm like the matching sets Nonna would make for my brothers and I every year. I called her on the weekend to say that I loved her. she said the same in response, though she thought I was my cousin.

I spend most of the day bound to my desk. my wrists are cuffed to the keyboard. sometimes I take the minutes for the meetings and I feel useful. tomorrow I wake early and make myself presentable for the office. the sun will be down by time I return - we watch it slip behind the horizon from our window on the second floor of our office building in the evening. maybe I will join friends at the pub for trivia. maybe I stay home and ruminate on the catastrophe of witnessing the landslide with no power to control an ounce of anything beyond my intake of oxygen and other substances.

the rain is peaceful. I dream of endless night and forgetting myself. I play on my phone too late. <<