The obstacles the pointless obstacles like crazy golf to do the most ordinary things but they weren’t pointless the obstruction was the point to make life difficult to steal her spoons the low pressure in her head the nearing of it feeling it all come undone too cold and slow like a punch to the temple feeling like she’d slipped a long time ago and was falling falling and only yet to hit the ground waiting for miracles waiting for the crunch waiting for the waiting to stop the feel of cashmere against her skin the creeping tiredness the light pressing in all around her a day it had been a day a nice day in some abstract sense only that she hadn’t had it in her and then feeling knowing that what she was waiting for wasn’t to have it in her only to not need to anymore and thinking again of the empty flat downstairs and how no one had come for weeks a ribbon of dental floss an empty jam jar a pasta bowl a thermostat a cup
Slowness a lag a twitching of fingers as after a lost note and touching her mouth as though to find it there and the click of the heating switching off for the night the queer marks by which she told the time a glimmer a warmth a coldness and the silence that said not yet not yet and then the headache that said too late sleeping into her chores a welcome earworm an ache behind the shoulders forgetting her yoga forgetting to meditate remembering to eat ramen with too much sauce to drink wine to drink coffee to drink wine and sometimes to sleep between to wash or to wax and then finding herself doing things without having to remember and remembering that thinking was mostly extraneous anyway and idly looking around at the same old things and thinking she’d have liked to move thinking maybe she did have the spoons maybe it would have given her spoons we never knew where they’d come from or where they’d go or where they’d go the careless squandering by other people she was tired of thinking she wanted to rest it was time she could tell it was time it was cold
The feeling the inkling of a winter in remission the threat promise inkling of new life renewed life of her death having been exaggerated the thin air the secondhand daylight the paper shapes of January’s shadowplay like wet tissue coming apart staining her fingers bleeding stains in the dirty snow realising she might have been over you but that your sister was kind of cute walking with new light a new moon the stretching of days slow inevitable and her new pink coat its new smell losing her touch or letting it go things that weren’t tortuous enough things that were too much a clicking of machines of heels the low sun like a wheedling child her hair in the branches or the branches in her hair unpleasant enough to be interesting a welcome outstayed a hand outstretched in clenching incipience wondering what she was doing here or what she saw in you a turning motor the motion of leaves the granite kerbstones or you her the road rising to meet her shoes or you her a moment suspended in air the shining red of a whistling vehicle the clawing of trees and then thinking maybe it had been nothing only darkness that rolled around the planet and came back again the gap between inhaling and exhaling and forgetting which came next she made a face and seeing it in a window laughed your name pursed her lips kissed you goodbye cleared her throat or was it a laugh walked lingered stopped at the traffic lights breathed
needing a pee a sore tooth needing to get up and do something she couldn’t recall forgetting if she’d done the things she’d needed to do earlier remembering 1989 like it had been yesterday kidding herself remembering it well then remembering feeling it then and its having felt anything but well but maybe maybe as bad as it had been now was so much worse that it had been well enough and she remembered it fine in all of its melancholy glory biting her cheek a darkening was only a brightening lived backwards
Cannibalised onions
A green bag that looked like a blue bag that looked like a green bag in light that made it look blue a yoga mat worn at the edges a blue light the box her pastels were in she knew they were she couldn’t see from here but they were a box for a tungsten filter empty though she couldn’t see from here an ashtray also empty a cluster of little people a nativity scene the gold loops for hanging them on the tree like haloes a capo a pile of notebooks a worn guitar a bookshelf a jar of petals a bunch of mistletoe a jar of petals a jar of petals a dried bunch of roses the wall we were here
Journaling as a proxy for living art as a proxy for living the art of living writing in a new tongue writing with the body writing life with the body on the body she didn’t do it to feel alive she did it to live
Muscles taut from work a tension across the forehead the glistening skin a pink and yellow scarf looking the other way climbing a tree the lights strung like vines a scalloped hem a two piece a floral headdress a magic mirror hiding your face a blue ribbon the pattern on your dress the pattern on the wall the pattern you made on the wall in your dress all of you all the way into the distance your arm covering your face naked a side boob a pile of clothes never trust the fae
She wanted to bite your legs she wanted your legs your socks your shoes the way the curtain fell across your face like branches the flowers like birds flowing away through the rocks a blank screen the end of the playlist
Trembling throbbing humming whirring whining whistling and a clang especially in the morning which she always mistook for the postman but he always rang twice and the searing cold like second violins like a piccolo like white sheets on a washing line a blue bin a pink leaf a dead bird
The spine of a book almost straight unlike her own a charity shop reject an orange box a toy animal with head obscured a horse or perhaps a unicorn who could say the corner of a keyboard a coil of wire the Roman arch at the heel of the joint and the soft lines of reflected light cherry browns an apricot warmth where her thumbs had worn it away over the years decades she really was that old now and then lifetimes she hadn’t even been her when she’d bought it
A little box like a cigarette pack for headphones miraculously charged by putting them away though remembering to take them with her was the trick remembering her notepad and pencil both on the same day but she was better at remembering her keys since she’d started locking herself in a great number of gradations in the light but all in the same direction like reams of paper like roof slates like walls and doorways and doors which was what it was
The weave of a rug the cursor never quite where her finger placed it the nearly that passed for okay in her day they’d have been shot in her day they were a button that clicked one try in three a paper that wouldn’t tear one size that fit fuck all a light that wouldn’t go off because the internet was down and her rapist shoved in her face every time no matter how often she thumbed it down a lock that sometimes opened a watch that sometimes showed the time a choral evensong of car alarms ignored by all but the shell shocked fingers that twitched glasses that saw but couldn’t read or read but couldn’t see everything on a broken knife edge the pages of a book renumbering themselves before her very eyes instant access to unlimited volumes of shite her teeth were sticking her ears were popping tissues woven through with plastic bones warped through with plastic oceans drowning turning it off and on again a Campbell’s soup action painting no one smoked anymore plastic soup cannibalised onions planes that dropped out of the sky
A nail file hearing it for the first time for the hundredth time hearing something new in it for the hundredth time she was born anew every minute nothing stuck it wasn’t fast enough
And then thinking she’d heard it all before and being bored because she was being boring the words and the sound of the words and what they’d meant then and what they meant now and whether she cared the still ache of your coffee held cradled kept retained clung to pocketed in her skull to hold you to hold on to you she was sustained by the pain of your absence and the pain of the laughter this thought stabbed into her side the purple of your silk scarf the veins in your thighs your socks worn at the heels a tinkle of tuned percussion the twitch of her cold fingers old and forgotten and forgetful yes but sharper yet than a flinty Alvarinho a tarnished watch that still kept time a diamond face that shone yet and cut the minutes clean in finger slices like panforte a tired masterpiece a vintage of rare and delicate beauty gathering dust a shitter for spiders and voles the oldest chord in the book and yet to be beat a backbeat a Parnassus a ramune a trine the first and last and always a Stradivarius waiting waiting for your gilded fingers only to pick her up and strafe at this unprimed emptiness with every hair and where oh where were your hardy fingers now only fingering clumsy or deft at some shagger’s cutty wee sark a party bag a dial tone the hum of an engine future days she was tired of herself tired of her own tiredness tired of how tired she was of you the bed she’d made and the bed she’d lie in the smell of it turning turning like seasons like everything like her stomach then like a mattress like the room and her stomach but she’d said that already her head hurt she was tired she was old she wanted you no one in the world Scott Walker the ache in her shin her temple all the way through like a great splintering vaulted nothing and the echo of her love breaking softly on distant walls lands shores the manes of horses and pricking their ears they turned and struck against the hard steppe thudding like fucked hearts from hills in the distance to distant hills a broken clock
cold listening to dog man star watching rain slice the faded cityscape the windows like tetris dripping from the world away collapsed wondering whether another world might be hiding behind the painted scenery and if she had it in her to get up and look longing for someone in particular spitting at the blue cracks in the black sky hating hope hating life hating having to wait until saturday to know if she’d be dead by then wishing she were young wishing she were old enough to not care anymore wishing you were that little bit more appealing than already very appealing so that she might be moved to do something about it to kiss you to hold your soft hands in her hard heart the ticking away of days all the people she’d lost deleting her socials so she wouldn’t need to see your nudes anymore the men you fucked for money and the women you fucked for fun she wanted to be dead only to be dead until she could be old enough to not care anymore the failing light the things undone she couldn't find her reading glasses
junk mail a song she’d loved once the repetition the familiarity the boredom the shame a little red circle that meant you might have phoned a broken plate the way her controller pulled to the left a hoar of dust over everything like she’d died and no one had known dried flowers a pile of magazines but she had daffodils a freshly burst blister pack her headphones were in the bin she was fine
the wedding present still made her feel a tiny bit less shite about everything
Le stade du Wimbledon
It was good to know at least she knew why she wished she were dead why she was shitting the bed and her hair was falling out why she couldn’t hold a thought for two straight minutes a sick light that barely registered soft annoyances a drone a periphery a reality a creeping intrusion trying to get out of herself to register the colours to name them to remember their names a cloud living under a cloud a thing scratching at the corner of it a bird it was a bird a small dark thing sketched in a smudge of graphite the blinds all at different heights like broken teeth submerged she was submerged head first in a bucket of hormonal fog walking around with a bucket on her head trying to kick it to kick herself in the head waiting for it to pass all her life waiting for it to pass waiting to be herself a luteal life waiting waiting for life to begin to break on through to kick the fucking bucket to ovulate
leave the blinds down she didn't want to know the blue light and the purple underside of it the scraping of her spoon on the bowl the noise her teeth made the feeling of her teeth in her head the feeling of her head
everything annoyed her then nothing that was all she wanted nothing not even annihilation only nothing a plastic shopping bag a motionless fan cables and crumbs a rainbow rug tired in the weak light a gasp from the fridge a single room for a single girl and one lightbulb and then of course remembering you and remembering that remembering was all she’d ever do with you again a silver spine a dropped coin a flyer with a number in pencil left in case she remembered why a box of pastels a sea green ashtray art books philosophy books boxes and jars a dusty reflection the rim of her glasses the tip of her nose the little hairs on her nose on her arms on her jumper a scrunched up piece of green paper a pile of books a pile of notebooks a hedgehog the scraped lines of a dozen dried roses a queer perspective the softness under her feet like a bucket of sick a colander a tangerine the corner of a blue box a sticky wine glass a loft apartment in the village a jar of water on the radiator one scratch on her watch face a sudden stillness a light in a distant window a tilt in the clouds like a polariser swarming eye motes a yellow curl a whistle the dents and scratches in the furniture the creaking inside her a ticking a wet shirt thoughts that were at peace
shafts of light like javelins like rocket launcher trajectories a photon gun a barrage of illumination a quantum assault at the frontlines of the colonial difference the roasting curve of reality carving the sea of possibilities and then dissipated by clouds drifting aimless powerful the yellow arc of some contraption a petal the edge of a stool a rainbow rose a simpering unease in the solar plexus and then clear again beams like ladders to the sky like an escalator to heaven in some old movie they were there always we just couldn’t see them like possibilities futures other voices other rooms like the fae like peace and quiet and open air like love the hammering had started again she was here
Fruity coffee buttery coffee hangover coffee hangover square the comforting hum of the espresso machine comfort coffee milky coffee a morning after a night before a beautiful human no regrets a lickable belly a line of soft hairs and hips like marble and the soft inertia this morning curling in the memory of it and the delicacy of her fragile constitution like soft dark hairs a warm headache a bed fresh with night sweats hormonal ideation one tiny spoon to kiss your fingers she was happy soft and fragile the banging of books against the floor a settling of bubbles the violence of statelessness a state violence
a cold pressure a saw tooth a violence she was going to bed
Sensitive reminders
Blue like metal like paper like eggs blue like leather and the weight of it stuck to the brown buildings blue like glass like oily coffee beans blue like a slate roof and dripping like sticky glue over cracked trees and the calyx of a winter in terracotta fragments then white the white of an eye of an envelope the white of a pill and forgetting to take her pill the white of spilled milk scalded milk the white of metal of eggs of glass and the wet sticking of light over the box buildings in mud red with no one in them black like a bin bag like a broken window and a cream underlay like cream like tigers like ice and pink and blue and white she was her body she was in her body her body was getting up to take her pill to put a pill into her body to change her body to make her body her
Sticky arms a scarring of rain against the window birds taking off upwards at forty five degrees pink sandstone like a powder compact vanilla with bits of vanilla in a new toothbrush the same old drouth a list of chores a chair under laundry the reflection of a magazine in the back of her camera the back of a guitar the side of the fridge the feeling inside when everything was wrong the impact of a violence from above the fear of violence the fear of stupidity she was going out she was putting her face on she was covering her eyes
Angles frequencies gradients the taste of imagined cake the point past which her neck wouldn’t turn a Foucault a Heidegger a Kate Spade a crown of roses the same room in a different light the people she remembered and the way she remembered them a Jacqueline Groag a letter from Cambridge a calling card a cable a cloth the edges of a stack of magazines a string of beads a darkening sky three bags piled together their straps coiling like knives a box of incense a photograph a cork and then her big floppy hat from summer blue now in the dark and unsure where she’d left it she wobbled into the other room
Composing curating a still life a swooping gull a bus passing through skeleton trees the dust caking in her nasal passages the pointless weekly sweeping why as some sort of concession to still being alive thinking she might never clean the bathroom again thinking she might not see next year yet days only but days less of her pills and the resolve resignation the retreat of having settled in the thought that the last pill would be the last and wondering whether she had the spoons to go through with it a cup of calyces the wrong end of the chopsticks rinsing the cloth changing the water another coffee another day the window that wouldn’t open and the one that would a piece of foil from an oestrogen patch wedged under to keep it from closing for good a string of numbers everything codified something a cloud the pattern the bird shit made on the walls vertical trees vertical buildings horizontal rain a list of things that needed repairing and hadn’t been in case she didn’t live long enough to care
Drones noise chosen noise background noise invasive noise rape noise privs complaining about trigger warnings the signal was the noise she was switching it off the trauma singularity swallowing triggers like a rhizome like a mushroom cloud a body without organs a war machine a Trojan horse familiar and strange a smile pronouns in your bio a knife in her back everything playing at once
A voice clear in the smoke and ashes like a knife saying pain saying bleed saying she was in pain and saying yes back to the knife to the voice saying yes she was in pain and the knife saying what she already knew and then looking away and the knife falling back into the smoke and the darkness and being in pain and wondering how the knife had known a tremor a vibrato a threat the wet mud the leaves stuck to the window the screaming wind and trees and howling inside she was howling inside with laughter with tears with lust grief rage defiance happiness
Seven things a list of things seven letters the way your hair smelled and the colour of it like a horse like a seething seething thing a dragon a hissing fire ashes hissing steam like horse latitudes the letters of your name rolling from far off tales Odyssean deicidal rolling like ships and planks of ships and being smaller and more afraid than she had realised clutching your last spoon like an oar like a life saver like an oily puddle around a choking drain and beating you off with a stale loaf of bread she had lost you engraved there on her last spoon seven letters all of them red a siren a ticking of clocks hearts the raised fist of her maneki-neko she was trying not to try not to think about you
Your clothes your skin under your clothes the ink under your skin and the hairs close enough naked enough in daylight enough to count the red hairs the letters of your name whispered now here in the wet January sinking of night into the catapult of the clock to be thrown without consultation into morning and coffee the must of monsoons trapped distant a magic bean she was stuck behind her eyes flickering in the tremulous regret of a last meeting wishing herself comfortable underwear and clean piss a sleepless turn of the wheel a fuzz guitar the ache in her belly the sorrow in the ache a spider to catch a fly we’d swallow anything the rust of ages a needle under skin a prick a violence a habitude twenty jazz funk greats the curve of a spine red with white spots like a fungus a ring for a fairy king cutting herself fucking herself buying herself flowers she wanted but then she couldn’t finish it and didn’t know even if she wanted to know what it was that she wanted and she thought that she would have it or not and that maybe that was enough a cold rinsing of gulls electronic noise the glass and the dry wood of the stairwell a locked door a railing a relative lack of privation the squealing of meat the hissing of ashes a scream or something in the yard
Trained like a healthy fighter
Musty upholstery terrazzo linoleum a hot damp wind dripping condensation the nausea even here in the middle counting the stops stopping counting the stops stopping thinking feeling sick feeling scared feeling without thinking without labels a new feeling in a different tongue which was to live in the gaps between thinking a puddle was an inverted island
Falling sideways a small basket of beads a book she no longer read a used tissue pink headphones a red kufiya the same small people the same songs on a different speaker the same wood a still camera a hair caught in the waistline of her skirt a hair caught in a snagged nail a battery a twitch an assault grey walls in yellow light the smell of laundry a fuzz guitar an unworn apron coffee left from yesterday or today a bottle of coins the same view in different glasses different eyes a poor rendering a button she couldn’t quite reach a life in cold and rain a street and the street under that used to be when thirty years forty years the street that would be but when nothing would ever be again she was older than the world she’d outlived it she’d beaten them she’d won
Stolen a failed attempt a palace coup a lesbian kiss the people who wouldn’t be there her memories of the people who wouldn’t be there and knowing her memories wouldn’t be there she wouldn’t be there there wouldn’t be there only what had been but even that wouldn’t be when there wouldn’t be anything for it not to be anymore there wouldn’t even be a past when there wasn’t anything a polka a bokeh a rot
Some awful thing she didn’t mean anymore and your face your blue hair the ring in your nose running like amphetamine a boxer a stem in monkey boots and your little blue hat and face she wanted to kiss you she wanted to put you in her pocket she wanted you to hit her she was running away
All she’d ever wanted had been to boil a good man’s potatoes a quiet a cold a stillborn suddenness then humming a blackberry winter a green apple a red wine a sweet potato the time and the record of the time shouting at her from the window to fuck off and leave you alone the same song from a different window small pains fingers and toes a winter peony silks and linens a tear that wouldn’t quite come a place just behind her she could feel but not quite reach the feeling moments before knowing and then it had happened and it had been you a box a bottle a physalis a waterless vase for glory for Marx the trim on her knickers the split in her lip the stitches and the itch in the stitches the people she couldn’t quite reach the people she could and wishing she would wishing she would kiss you or you her and not much minding anymore either way as long as there was kissing and knowing and being sad and running away she was always running away from you from everything from herself from the split in her lip and laughing till it hurt and running limping into damp hallways and stairwells and drawing hearts with her finger on the Crittall window and thinking how apt how apt that her heart be run through with a grid of wire
A wet light pouring over the morning like cold milk a torn ticket to nowhere the dome of the sky like a blue egg and the parchment buildings silting into the bracken of winter’s clogged sink a salonnière a bottle of brackets taking the mail in her negligée shitting gin saturated like the sandstone walls a drip of something leaking somewhere the Fassbinder lighting of a day of night an international day of night solitary birds tracing the screen of the window like aimless cursors not even precursors as in precursory times only naked meaningless born right to left or the buildings crashing into them the other way what time did Oxford get to this train a puddle a flicker a scratch half an orgy the foxes pink in twilight the silver oxidation of her ever lowering heart closing like the eyelid of a tired dream a glitter ball a jar of honey the queer diffractions in a half empty glass a rumble of machines that said onward onward into more night and death the pressing demands of distant realities a paper hat a gold star maybe she shouldn’t have
You’d stopped coming not because you didn’t care but because it upset you to see her like this well same lover it upset her to see you so selfish and gutless and then the afternoon light like a cold hand on her febrile shoulder and lines gouged from the buildings of it like sun lasers cast from ice horizons like scythes of recrimination like sheaves of language and the unnamed catastrophe the frosted rooftops like gingerbread houses and the endless clearing of her throat a boot cycle the sky a blue screen of death the trick was to keep breathing there was nothing tricky about her
A little fly and thinking she’d have to throw her flowers out and not wanting to throw her flowers out waving it away thinking about you about your nose and your fringe and thinking about the books you’d read and wanting to kiss your fingers and read your books and to be in the world you were in which she was she should have been happy she was sad she was lonely