Winter Sleep

The cold, white snow cracked underfoot, giving way just a little before sinking to the frozen soil below. As always, the winter day was setting before it even began, casting, long, lazy streams of sunlight through the trees. Snowflakes danced like paper crystals in the air, gusting waves of glistening cloud into my eyes. Brittle branches creaked and swayed, with single dead brown leaves quivering a lonely hello as I made my way deeper into the woods. Coming upon a shallow, fast moving creek I inhaled deeply the pungent mix of mud and ice cold water. I stumbled ever closer, held heavy under the weight of pills and alcohol. Drowning in apathy and inhibition, I cloaked myself in the beauty around me and it stirred my sadness. Hot tears welled and burst from their ducts, streaming slowly down my cheeks, ending as cold raindrops from my nose. Nature was unusually kind today and revealing of her precious secret power to overwhelm you.

I stuck my feet in the water and soon my shoes were filled to the brim and I could feel the ice water leaching between my shoes, around my arches and ankles, stealing their warmth. It wasn’t long before my feet were numb, then hot again. I took a deep drink from the amber colored alcohol in my rub-red hands. It tasted sweet and harsh and burned its way down my throat. My eyes closed reflexively and I stood in the half light, swaying in lazy waltz with the motion of the trees. Left………….. right……….. 

I came to my knees and let the water rush past my calves and knees, piling up against my thighs. I began to shake ever so slightly, involuntarily my body continuing its will to live. I looked up at the sky, grey-wash cement clouds mixing against the blue tapestry, the sun peppering my eyes, blinking shadows. I soon stopped shaking. My legs felt heavy, like lead weights tied off around the thigh, floating behind me, amputated. I laid down backwards and inhaled sharply from the shock of cold cascading around my body. My head exposed, water rushed in to block my ears and I fell into a rumbling silence. I winced but never moved. Slowly the pain gave way and my body began to fade, heavy with water and numbness, needled in place by invisible threads of ice. The tears came again, only short burst of eye water mixing with the dim light, warming my eyelids before disappearing forever. I fingered the stones beneath my hands and sighed deeply; smooth and water worn.  I lingered for a moment in the effervescent sunshine, watching the powdery flakes float away, taking me along, higher and higher, above the deserted canopy, back from where they came. 

To be Alone

-->

 On the precipice of despair ­– laughing. Calling out the names of old lovers like wisps of smoke from an extinguished flame, riding the current of the winds of time. What leaves the taste of a Queen, in the mouth of a young child. Lusting. Reaching. Agonizing. Calling out in the darkness. See me. Feel me. Hear me. Know me. 

Isabella was a slut, or so they said. A real piece of shit, but also a lovely girl. It was hard, knowing your husband wanted the babysitter. Maybe you’d call it to her face, if you were any braver, any more sure of yourself. But it’s hard to know where you stand, on an island made of sand. Falling down under the weight of lies, bigotry and pride. Who were these simple people. With the flashlight smiles and grotesque lies. 

He came on her like a flash. Without warning, brightly. Suddenly, there he was, calling her name, motioning towards his cock. That red little pecker, all alive with the thought of her hot young mouth. Where was her mother after all? 

Fast-forward past 1983. Past the days that spilled out like rain onto the sidewalk and into the gutters. Past the time her parents met and decided, foolishly, to know one another as lovers do. Its hard to blame children. 

But we do. 

1999, and all the rights of childhood are gone, even if technically still intact. Daughter maybe more adult than guardian. Though never when and where it counts. How dare she anyway, suppose that she could cook all on her own, simply because, she couldn’t stand that hand that feeds her. 

Isabella you slut. You 13 year old child. You babysitter. You stoned hippie. You mother fucker. Isabella you Queen. You delicious danish of perfection. Don’t let those fat little thighs make you think otherwise. Squish squish. I know how they go, rubbing on the inside, causing you pain. Masking who’s to blame. Forget him. Forget what he said when he was drunk. Remember Isabella, remember your name, and that Paris is where you go to be alone.

Menu

You could be this mother fucker

–I think to myself–

eating his ketchup chips,

sagging like a brown banana

slipping from the chair

in stained and dirty track suit.

You could be that mother fucker

and his no name bag, 

of no name chips

stuffed inside 

his acidic yellow

No Frills sac.

You could be that mother fucker I think.

Sour cream

and onion.

Chin crumbs,

and another day, 

wasted;

instead of hiding your decay,

your pain and your fear,

you could be eating it 

on the train. 

A Love Story

She approached him, dirty and unkempt, stalking the sidewalk like a cougar, night and day.

“How come you never ask for money?”she asked.

He looked at her blankly. The the act of human interaction had been lost to him. He searched his mind through ancient figments. Seconds passed as the street continued on obliviously around them. She stood staring at him unquestioningly, unphased by his grotesqueness. He lifted his toes inside the almost bottomless shoes to feel the gravel. Strange reminders flickered inside him, sensations from memories long lost to the confusion and shame. A wave of lust moved like a frozen tide into his barricaded mind. All he had known for so long from others was fear or obilvion. Of which, this was neither.

“Do you have any?” he asked finally.

“No.” She responded.

He grunted and sucked back on his dirty second hand cigarette. His shock blue eyes were the only clean patch left on such a piece of used up real estate. And he knew it. He just didn't understand why she had come to look at the landscape. 

And as quickly as she came, she turned and walked away.

Sour Spouts

I remember the old man, sitting alone, drinking scotch and milk. I remember thinking, it was a strange combination and wondered what it tasted like. I wondered why he drank it. But more than that, I wondered what he was thinking when he looked at me like that. When he licked his lips like that. The way he called me darlin'. The way he smiled. It made me think. His eyes, the colour of mustard and peas. His skin like a wrinkly plucked chicken, greasy and uneven, except for that big, bloated belly, which waddled from side to side. Sometimes he would watch TV, but mostly he would watch me. Sliding the doors open and shut. Bending down. Standing up. Washing glasses. Pouring cheap, weak beer, from old sour spouts. Hours would pass under the drone of the television and clinking glass. Scrapping off the plates while he sipped his scotch and milk, and watched me. He would talk so quiet, that I would have to lean in close, just to hear him. Just inches between us. I wondered what he thought of then. Most of the men in that small town would look at you, but he was the only one that made me feel that way. Sometimes it's hard to keep your dignity and your paycheque.

Growing

And that is how 

the people that you know, 

become words upon a page, 

and all those summer days, 

drift away. 

Breathing in and breathing out.

The Act of Being Human

I must have known at some point that all this inward journeying, all this abstract introspection, would have to lead me back here, to the pampered confines of my middle-class existence, ravishing and admonishing the treat of normalcy and routine from which I feed life back into my exhaustion. Even now I’m not sure it will ever be enough to return the vitality once had, the energy and optimism of youth, that immense sense of possibility born from the inner labyrinth of ignorance.

Playfulness is no longer an act, but a secret memory.

Yet I hold out hope that maybe the night will revel itself to be young again and the dawn will wink its shimmery eye at me from that distant horizon and speak its promises. In these hollow empty streets, lit up from the inside by dozens of neon razors, I might find myself welcome once again, find an autumn air which is not yet ice inside my nostrils and breathe it with zealously and compassion. Rediscover that old familiar sound, the crunch of grit in the heart of the city, a city with no bounds, no confines, only roadblocks of ambition and bravado. Nights alight in the cold stone whitewash of the moon. Edinburgh, London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Dubai, Sydney, Tokyo; once the siren songs of the twisted mind of an adolescent girl in conflict with the sanctum of her windowless soul. A girl dared to tread a million miles, through a million hills and down again to find out the meaning of it all. There is no amount of gold or riches, love or power in the world which rivals the need for a journey written into the heart of a child. A child who fighting for the will to speak in for a world which turns inside her in all the emotional hues of the greatest symphony. It was a desire to see greatness in grit, joy in fear, and the meaning in struggle. To bear witness to the god that sighed oceans of tepid coloured rain clouds into her mind. To understand the perfection of the imperfections that weave the web of serendipity. Which is to say, it was to know oneself. To feed on the caress of your own past and  spit the ashes of old selves into the fiery eye of the setting sun. 

To believe once again that you can and should live, boldly, unashamedly and  for the sheer inexcusable pleasure of it. 

Simply because,

that is what we do.