💞

when i was fourteen i told my stepmom that i wanted pink walls

because my best friend had pink walls

when i was seventeen she painted them pink

my best friend now has white walls

not that she repainted

just that that title has been reassigned

the walls are too pink

they make my skin look like i’ve been scratching at it

or in the sun too long

they make my eyes glaze over and i try to ignore the reason that they’re pink

because i failed to be my own person

this self awareness isn’t particularly useful

because now i want white walls

i desperately crave that human engagement

these four walls are more of a human encagement

sometimes i want to just collapse on the pavement

or carve myself a permanent engravement

teach me to rid my brain of such depravement

or just give me a brand new cerebral replacement

let me live my life for pure entertainment

even if it leads to fucking debasement

i don’t want to live until i’m ancient

losing sleep over income and payments

in a dog eat dog world i have to be complacent

kill others to sooth my constant ailments

a short story i wrote:

Your broken leather boots plunge from puddle to puddle, the droplets of rain providing shiny solace from the dirty, grey streets you’ve been walking for what feels like eternity. A fat pigeon breaks your pensive mood. You drop the cigarette you can’t remember lighting into a puddle. Looking up, you notice people surrounding you, rushing hurriedly up and down the street. The smokey, charred walls of the city begin to glow with bright neon colours, and flowers bloom from potholes. As you gaze intently at a now emerald cathedral, it grows into a quadrilateral obscenity. Your surroundings turn to abstract shapes and you look with panic at the pigeon, hoping to find familiarity in its wings, but it has contorted into a plane and glides away through the sky full of figures.

Your legs have been moving without your permission and as you look down you realise you’ve been tirelessly trekking on a treadmill, whose screen has symbols you can’t comprehend dotted all over it sporadically. As you lean to peer closer at the hieroglyphics you trip and fall, melting into the screen like a droplet into an ocean.

Tumbling down and down, your head spins and twists, the walls of mud around you become more apparent. Veins of roots adorn the tunnel. You land with a thud. A glass table sits in the centre of the room and you notice a heart shaped sweet on top. EAT ME is engraved on its surface. As you lift it, you are hit with a not-so-distant memory.

Loud music plays as you stumble into a dimly lit room with a stranger. She kisses you and hands you a tablet. You grin and swallow it dry. The little source of light in the room is quenched and the memory ends.

You place the heart shaped sweet in your mouth, following its commands, and chew. The world goes black again.

Opening your eyes, you groan. Your muscles are cramped from lying in one position for too long. You try to stretch and fail. A cloak of darkness covers whatever claustrophobic container you’re trapped in. Always a quick thinker, you reach into your pocket for your cheap plastic lighter. Lighting the flame, you realise how suspiciously coffin-shaped the box is. Fuck, you think, what did that girl in that one movie do? You grab your trusty blade from your pocket, probably one of your only belongings with real value. You set to work carving a fist sized hole in the ceiling of the coffin. You hit it until your fist bleeds and it begins to give way. Dirt falls on your face, covering your eyes and it cuts to black.

Sick of opening your eyes to new horrors, you feel around first. Soft. Warm. Smells like home. Home. That word doesn’t seem to belong in your head. Certain wires aren’t connecting. Giving in to curiosity, you look around. Sure enough, it’s your childhood bed. You roll out of it, staying vigilant for your next mission. In your eye-line is the top of the radiator and the bed frame. You notice how much lighter you feel. You remember the broken mirror that used to be in your landing. Jumping to reach the doorknob, you enter the hall and look in the mirror. You sigh a defeated sigh. Just my luck, you think to yourself, I’m a fucking six year old. Having learned from the absurdity of this world - or whatever is it you’re experiencing, you touch the mirror. It moves like mercury. Of course, you think, why wouldn’t it(!) A gust of wind pushes you through and the pool of silver-esque mirror gloop clears to become water.

The streets around you are grey once again. The dirty puddle still holds your cigarette and you ponder whether you’ve imagined it all. You stand under a nearby building to shelter yourself from the rain.

Once again, the fat pigeon waddles by. It cocks its head at you. You move your head in response in a fairly pathetic attempt to intimidate it. In return, it intimidates you. Opening its beak, it speaks. “I can fix this.” A rather towering voice for such a blob of a pigeon. It hops forward and pecks you. Memories rush in.

Laughter. The room explodes after you make a snide comment. Someone slaps your back as they wheeze. The faces of the people around you light up. A familiar warmth fills you.

Hurt. You gaze down at your wrists in disbelief. Blood oozes and yet you can’t feel a thing. You collapse back into your bed and let out a raspy sigh.

Excitement. A grin is etched on your face as you hand over a wrapped box to a woman with blonde hair. ‘But first,’ you beam, ‘your card!’ Passing her an envelope covered with glitter, you feel yourself being embraced.

Loneliness. You pull your head up and look yourself in the mirror. Wipe your nose. Sniffle a bit. Finally a kick; the words echo in your head. Music reverberates through the bathroom as the band begins playing next door.

These images flash through your mind, only glimpses of moments, never full memories. They feel like clothes that don’t fit anymore. You’ve grown too high and too wide for such fanciful things. Realising what just happened, you look to the pigeon for answers.

“I can take you home or free you,” the bird says. Consumed with confusion, all you manage to utter is a weak “Who are you?” The words feel too small for such a heavy question. The pigeon, now gazing into the puddle, replies.

“I am everywhere. Omniscient. Ever-watching. Never stopping. I take form as whatever I wish to. I am Death, pleased to meet you.” Noticing your hesitation, he continues. “I have taken pity on you, which I rarely do. But your soul is built with material too highly coveted, I couldn’t take you without asking. I can take you home or free you.”

The doors to the building behind you swing open. One emanates a strong perfume of roses and dry ice, or fog.. You don’t know which. Inside is a bed laden with black linen and covered by a veil, accessorised with mesh pillows and white petals. Following your eye-line, Death says; “this is the doorway to death. I prefer the term ‘eternal peace’.” Curious now, you look through what you assume to be the ‘Life’ doorway. A rough frothy ocean and a shoddy rowing boat. Sounds about right, you think, glad that you’ve kept your sense of humour. “Over the horizon is Joy and Laughter,” the pigeon seems to examine each word carefully before committing to speaking it aloud, “but you’ve got some Loneliness and Hurt to navigate first. But that’s Life.”

You let your heavy heart and aching bones collapse onto the floor with you for a second. “No time like the present,” you begin, and the birds proverbial face lights up, hoping to see a sliver of resilience in you,“for a cigarette.” Not what the bird expected to hear. You pull a slender cigarette from your bruised packet. It’s seen better days, you suppose, but so have you. Lighting it with your almost broken blue lighter, you laugh, realising you still don’t know where you are. Purgatory, maybe? God knows. If God’s even real. After a couple minutes of painfully tense and overly long pulls of your cigarette, you stub it out on the wall beside you and throw it into the puddle.

God, life is pointless.

You stand up and glance between doors. The sea spray hits you and the sickly sweet roses implore you to choose them...

You kick off your shoes. “When you’ve lived the life I have,” you say to the bird, your eyes still darting from door to door, “you learn pretty quickly how to swim.”

Memento mori.

i am going to lose her like i’ve lost everyone else i’ve loved like i love her

i don’t even want to write it down or to speak it into existence

i can feel myself letting her slip sometimes

sometimes i even like to think about it

some sort of cruel self torture or perhaps sadistic ritual

but anytime i do hurt her however marginally it hurts me so much

i’ve been staring at the ceiling

i never used to do that

i can’t sleep because i want her to talk to me

like how i used to feel about boys

that’s what scares me

i don’t like knowing how much she can and will hurt me

nothing is forever and i try my best to enjoy the now and i’m good at that

but i’m sensitive i’m emotional and yet i’m somehow have complete tunnel vision on myself

i struggle to talk to her sometimes

i got really jealous that she had sex with somebody else

i started shaking

i think sometimes that i’m in love with her

she told me she thinks that she’s in love with me too sometimes

she was high then

and i often feel like she might not even like me

but i know she does

the rational part of me knows she does

but my emotions tell me otherwise

that cunt in my head that i’m usually good at ignoring

do i even like girls? maybe it is just to feel different

i really do think i do though sometimes

other times i don’t

if i do then i might be in love with her

i know i’m not actually

maybe it’s infatuation

i’m so overly communicative that i wish she could read this without me telling her or showing her

i wish she would talk to me more

i wish i lived closer to her

i hurt her a lot and she tries to be there for me and i can’t even do that for her, i make mindless comments or dismiss things that mean a lot to her

but i always listen to her cry when she can cry

that’s worth something

it’s hard to stare at the ceiling with no glasses

it’s less poetic

or more?

i can’t tell

chimerical

fairy dust dripping off her wings

irises kissed with a glisten

adorned with silver earrings and rings

ears sharp and ready to listen

alert, never moving, never breaking a twig

skin to match moss on an autumns eve

hair tangled with petals and sprigs

to my delight she can’t see me

watching her from afar

hiding round corners, twixt trees

hoping to bask in the sweetness

of the chimerical pixie

mx

i tapped the ash off my cigarette

i rolled it myself, with my mother concerned

it took me a while to learn

a life skill for the mentally disturbed

the ash dropped past my windowsill

it tumbled and tumbled through the cold concrete

i stared and felt pulled into its descent

i took a long drag as a treatment for defeat

maybe someday my lungs will collapse

and i won’t feel oxygen fill my veins

and i won’t breath out my anxiety

or breath in my disdains

but until that day comes i’ll tempt fate with a flame

and look cool with teeth stained

and cough sometimes when strained

and life live with lungs maimed

i’ve started a journal. in a new format, which i’ve never tried before. i’m reclaiming my blog here, perhaps in an effort to relive some nostalgia.