storm in a tea cup

The lightning is forking through the sky, horizontally and looks pink and purple. The trees show the undersides of their leaves as the wind whips around. I sit at my computer with a frightened cat and realise I have no-one to reach out to, no-one at the other side of the screen who is interested any more. I wonder what the chances of being struck by lightning are, more when there actually is a storm out there I suppose?

Is it a hopeful sign that I have not sent this mail to you yet, that there is some kernel, an unexploded popcorn seed of self worth that contains all the pride I have left? My finger hovers over the mouse, wondering which button I will press.

exoskeleton

I need to learn (again) that just because someone acts like they want to be with you, it doesn't mean they really do, or that they are prepared to do anything about it. 


I need to learn not to be so trusting, and not to believe that it means something special and life-changing when someone says "I love you".


Like physics lessons, this is not something I want to learn, I just need to, in order to get where I want in the short term. I want an exoskeleton.

always after...

After my haircut, I have soft fur at the back of my neck.  I can feel his fingers rustling through it, his thumb caressing the fuzzy hollow at the base of my skull.  I see him tilting my face upwards to his, see my face pale and oval, see the dark fringe point to my underwater green eyes.  I see myself from outside and inside and I look pretty.

It isn't real, he isn't here, but he is talking as if that might happen next week, or maybe the week after, although I know my hair will grow and grow straggly before that is real.  I will look in the mirror and the sheeny chocolate colour from the hairdressers will grow dull, and my eyes will not fade but lose the light of belief in my attractiveness.

He tells me he has to go now, his dinner is burning in his kitchen, their kitchen, and though his mind was only just full of me I fade out to a ghost for him then. He does compartmentalise so, although he is drinking vodka at the family table. 

He will catch me later, he says.  I know not to trust too literally in that, I have fallen here before and he stepped away. With my pretty haircut I will not notice the grazed knees, not until after.

polished?

This week, I wrote in a mail to someone explaining my bulimic writing process.  I'm from the vomit school of writing, I sit down and spew the stuff up, then tidy it up a bit.  Things happen in life, I swallow it all down, and then sick it back up, somewhat selectively.  It's not that life makes me sick, I just react to it stomach first.  My natural inclination is not to polish writing endlessly, to pick the perfect perfect perfect word because near perfect will do for me.  





So I was quite surprised to find how much I enjoyed the polishing up of a haiku series yesterday, adding pictures and creating a new Issuu "publication" for it.  Perhaps there is no thing as too much practice ;)  Click the picture to see the finished result!

again...

you left me alone again today

I know you don't see it like that

it is just the weekend

and of course you have to be

with your family.

They are real

and I am not.

I said it again...

...what I always end up saying and what always gets them running for the fucking hills.  Men, I mean.  Married men even more so.



"Make your mind up"



They seem to want to believe that they have no fucking choice in things, that they drift through life and things just happen to them, without their volition.  Innocent victims of their own magnetism.  The merest suggestion that they are complicit in their own lives, and not awash in a sea of circumstances is ignored if at all possible, shrugged aside or compartmentalized somewhere else that doesn't interfere in the here and now so they can carry on saying the things they say to me, doing the things they do to me.



And really, they ask, what is wrong with me that I can't turn a blind eye forever?  That I can't just keep on compromising?  Why do I have to hold up a mirror to their actions and make out as if they have done something wrong?  It's not like they've been caught, so it's not a real problem, is it?  Why can't I just go back to before and be an adoring foil for their ego? 



I do it so well.

Mugged

I am too weak and

you are too tempting, please

leave like a stormcloud.



Storm tossed reeds bounce back,

"you are strong, independent,

she needs me," he pleads.



My needs ploughed under

dark soil so yours can grow, forced

to my fallow time.



No coffin for this

love killed by your thoughtlessness;

naked mouldering.



Repeated goodbyes

touched to fiery sparks, puddled

blisters left to heal.



My essence pools,

slows to mirrored ice, blue sheened

to reflect you back.



also featured at The Camel Saloon

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I don't deserve this title...

I'm doing so well, I tell myself.  Just passed the previous "best time" of 23 days without contacting him.  I'm now on 25 days.  Why am I even telling you this?  Or telling myself this? 



A plaudit for being apathetic and doing nothing, well go girl, you deserve an award for that.  Clap hands that you managed to set up a situation where doing nothing is it's own reward, how strong you've been!



How strong that you are sitting here counting the days.  Can't get up and do something, you might lose count.  How strong you are to remain rooted, battling off incipient claustrophobia, to let worn-out thoughts flit and fit in your head like fruit flies inside an empty wine bottle.



Stop already with the metaphors...

wtf?

yeah thanks for chatting with me today for a whole nineteen minutes really appreciate the effort; thanks for telling me that you were pissed off with the choices you'd made because now you had to live with your in-laws or in a poky small flat with her and your baby and not even thinking for one fucking microsecond that i might want to hear that some small tiny part of your pissed-offness might be because you missed me in your life in your dreams in your thoughts; thank you for talking about football as if it fucking mattered and thank you for continuing to talk about football as if it fucking mattered even after i told you i couldn't care less; thanks for being so interested when i told you i was pissed off that you didn't even ask why not of course that there was much opportunity to in the nineteen minutes really, not when i was there to provide a witty and pointed and stimulating counterpoint to your fucking everyday life and thanks for appreciating so much that your life would suck without me so much you still want to dump on me even though you would hate to admit that your life would suck without me i have fucking songs in my brain again but it's probably better than my thoughts; thank you Sinead for giving me the lines; thank you for breaking my heart thank you for tearing me apart now I've a strong, strong heart thank you for breaking my heart... thank you for showing me again what a fucking idiot i am to think of better times, to think of you, to think...