Blue cerulean sheer like cold a cough punching through her like aliens and the pain in her flank like a love bite the cold orange trees and the hard shadows mildewed red stone green like socks a low squealing of birds a filth a dampness and green glass layered like cake and the hard blue knifing through it all like a fist through her kidneys the chalky light that sterilised oak and pine dried flowers instantly glued dust flattened time ages lives collapsed in one laminated serum in two dimensions like liquid spread over a surface like a stain like shadows she was always in pain did it matter a new hurt for old then shifting only a nomadology the fist raised and slammed again somewhere else she was old she was ill she was cured like ham

silver like fish like the stretch marks marbling her love handles blue like her toes forgetting to cut her nails the silky light like lace stockings laddering the sky a wedding band holding the sunrise close to the earth and your absence crusted bloated forlorn like a salt-baked sea bass the one dumbfounded eye of it staring at her from the pan of her day and this day of all days but it was always this day there was always some lost someone a mourning for the ungrievable and she too a worn thing like her threadbare veil tired of her own perpetual mourning and angry with you with all of you for dying and leaving her here a sparkling fall a washed Peru a pink wooly hat thumping clanging a row of birds on a wire mud-grey against low clouds

flat puddled like plastic beads wind blown a broken thread a sink full of soapy water unbending prevarication waiting for you to shut up so she could tell you she loved you but never she would never tell you always this stifled smoke when both of you could smell it and then this smelly man scratching himself in public and her stifled distaste she was going to the kitchen a baby in a pram hoisted like a dignitary down the stairs thinking about you and crying missing you wanting to tell you she missed you wanting to throw herself down the stairs looking competent by the grace of other people’s incompetence a twist in her solar plexus that might have been hunger telling herself it was hunger it was hunger it was a hunger for you for your way of saying oh no for your competence for the kindness she was unable to muster without the glow of yours to inspire her with guilt knowing that made her a good person and not believing it for a minute

a roll of sticky tape a chocolate biscuit an excuse she was such a bitch and you were too kind to assent to this in the face of all evidence annoying the girl next to her hating the boy behind her and the woman at the other end of the room hating the boss and the big boss more hating the bosses a boss level work as a game beyond her level of competence throwing the controller at the screen her dyspraxia like stick drift the smell of come of cis dick a violence proximal invasive the ache in her cheekbones the twist in her ribs like a knife like a centurion putting her out of her misery could she hear herself a shared concern without the shared inclination to action it the contours of a headache peaks and valleys of relative peace a yellow pencil striped like a long bee

a lovely human buying her an anarcho-feminist coffee for her least favourite day of the year and the thought shared that tomorrow be designated trans day of remembering how fucking amazing she was and then Natalie and then Artem and all of the others but them first because she had loved them and loved them still and remembering them as they had been happy seditious beautiful an apple a tangerine a granola bar a notebook reminders taped to the wall and wondering absently why you hadn’t called to check she was okay which she was not and then only thinking to wonder whether you were okay which in near certainty you were not and feeling broken on the wheel of her inexactitude missing your lunchtime excursions eating and walking the corners of her mouth of your mouth of your mouths and tongues and the longing to unearth you to consume you as the earth and the worms and maggots should to be grown of you which she was a cultivar she was your queer offspring all of you lovers mothers the categories of patriarchal subjugation

Lungs tearing like wet paper jars with unidentifiable contents an archeology a breath she never quite got in and the purple roof saluting the silver light the taper of a Finnish tumbler her camera looking at her not even its shutter lowered like eyelids no accusations any longer only sadness the unused French notepads so late her reminder reminded her she was tired a life waiting to die had no business being actually unpleasant sufferings noble or meaningless she didn’t care anymore only she objected to being reminded she was alive

fighting fires liking it better than twiddling her thumbs liking it better than passive aggressive liking it better than shouty men who made her friends cry liking her friends and crying because she liked her friends and crying because her friends were crying crying because her friends liked her a weekend of acute impostor syndrome the normalisation of unprovoked hostility from people who knew nothing about her so that unprovoked kindness from people who knew nothing about her provoked an existential crisis liking being good at something hard liking knowing she was good at something hard wanting a cigarette a tree like a burst paper bag raggedy like her bangs giving in to her past self to get the job done the lipstick rim on her coffee flask a pristine block of sticky notes forgetting what she was doing forgetting what day it was remembering and not having time to be angry or sad which made her angry and sad a heavy light inky like blotting paper something untoward on her keyboard in all likelihood she’d eaten worse a blue screen a glimmering retreat the end of a bad day the unendurable was the beginning of the curve of joy

Leaning tweedy and the purple light in purple black night wrapped like velvet like a cape a bat wing a guano a yellow light sudden square the brass fixings plastic made to look like leather a Chinese shoegaze mixtape a sparkling of fairy lights like champagne bubbles her dried snot the slow release from illness into merely depleted a glass of water soft like cream like mints a saccharine taste in everything a weight across her shoulders her brows her forlorn destitution a beautiful Basque girl who bought her an Orangina a bookmark a gel pen a subway the dry winter street too many layers a gossip a gab a boy she’d known in another life smiling at her in this one wondering ever whether they knew wondering whether they cared wondering guilty whether they might be into it wondering if she cared she liked her friends her community her fam

her skirt tight around the waist forgetting to look outside of herself the smell of wet garbage seeing you this close to hand touching within an inch of your flesh of your sweater the cigarette taste of her bread the underside of your chin the hairs on your wrists a paling of pencils and pens ringed in wire a nail file like a popsicle stick for jaded tongues and wanting to lick you barbed dangerous to suck gently on your skin but it was her tongue that was dangerous the grey polyester of your electric trousers your pony tail your glasses your breasts

a coil of wire the ache in her ankle the engine of winter thudding and inarticulate waiting for it to pass to wait for the next thing to pass a pile of tins bonded like brick a pile of books a heap of trouble a mountain of regret a melting of hope that trickled dribbled forlorn the cracks in the rocks refusing you her wisdom because she wanted to keep you as you were kind alive divine and not some broken salty fuckup she could unzip a fly by the power of her mind a bent spoon her heart a bouncing ball on the roulette wheel of your affections everything on red it was her time

Her tooth hurt a blinking amber light her finger her belly praying for one more day before it all fell apart trembling twitching the rattle of some movement through the wall the whirr of a fan like an endless exhalation a metallic taste a dripping sleepiness like spilled honey jolting awake and spilling metal bones the metal plates in her face a cyborg a mutant a seifuku the ache in her shoulder in her gut she hadn’t shat in days her tits were too small she was beautiful she was old all of her babies were dead a glow like pink health an illuminated berry the part she couldn’t reach waiting until the clock said it was the time her body said it was already poking at it with her tongue leaving it alone a blue blanket a busy morning but only if she survived the night a stick of incense forgetting not to yiff in public

the smell of bin on her hand your notebook salvaged blue like her seifuku the stroopwaffels from your leaving party open still how long a month and tasting like it feeling ill missing you moving into your locker writing her name on the back of yours to keep you and your spoon a lanyard bobby pins washi tape lemon and rhubarb the night fighting to fall through hard sheets of rain sedimenting like layers of epistemic garbage over the day a burst baloon lodged behind the heating pipes forging your signature the wind rumbling stern admonishments against creaking muntins cowering contrite the pink of her sweater an armour for defenders of the faithless her breasts her fingers clacking at the keys reaching for the words reaching for your fingers for your soft clacks echoing still in the headers she was glad you were gone she was sad you were gone you were gone she was sad

Not getting replies when she thought she was being cute not being left alone when she thought she was being firm not knowing what she was doing wrong only that she was that she didn’t speak human that they perplexed her but she was old now and mostly indifferent resigned her piles of garbage the grey walls the hoar of mildew over everything poking at it with her tongue wishing to choke on it in the night always waking to the same horror that the sun had come up again and the sad understanding that the end was begun yes but messy slow that the end of the world would be woken into again and again and again it had taken her lifetimes to die a purple tube a paper bag a book with its mouth agape a yellow bookmark licking the air a coil of wire a black device the silver pine yellowed under long suns another ten minutes a film coming back to her an old man’s suicide a bottle of nail polish iridescent like boiled candy a nail file a youthful folly delivered with the clumsiness of old age slowing down breathing giving up

her favourite human and another favourite human and it not even nine yet and coming into work smiling a floral long black tea-like opening fruity sweet the acidity mellow even fully opened thinking she was smelling the perfume on the back of her hand but no it was peonies it was oolong then finding you mildly annoying a tiny leaf stuck in a spider’s web horizontal fenestration like bookshelves like piano keys a hannunvaakuna the cringe of your hopeless flirting with this dreadful boy jealousy yes but concern loving you wanting better for you a broken salty fuckup patronising but again love and not knowing what to do or whether and a recycled tree and a bird tripping on the leading over the blood-red pitch of a distant rooftop and the lilac morning fading into the distance a snapped branch a battered gift bag a pile of papers with nowhere to go

her distaste for you poor taste and no longer worrying for you only sad that your judgement had turned out to be so poor and trying not to think about what that meant for her own and having to listen to you proving her affections misplaced the uneven staining of these plastic fixings listening to her Fei knowing that meant she was sad just because it was her most dependable happiness an orange chair a bottle of soda discarded waiting to explode the empty space where the unexplained pile of boxes had been a pink locker a peeling sign from another pandemic fuck it she was turning her volume up she was drowning you out because she was not ready to fall out of love yet a fallen device of indeterminate purpose and the vile holiday you celebrated for all your wokeness and her misgivings expressed more jovially than she’d meant the unshielded wires protruding from the walls the room she missed downstairs the gunmetal carpet tiles like obliterated tanks a minefield a sapper then and loves long lost her handbag tired collapsed like burst bagpipes and winter’s aircon hoarding dust a breathless girl with a cute butt the sweetness of water an empty noticeboard random thoughts

the lightness the easy laughter the softening of her brow the sheer relief like a cancelled meeting the whining in your voice and your self-abasement finding you laughable not fuckable and the thought of fucking you laughable laughing at herself for having wanted to and feeling warm and light and free in her misandry and its fuzzy extension to all who failed to share in it her jealousy giving way to smugness a smirking superiority and the embrace of her solitude once more the enfolding joyous emptiness of her old life opening like a prairie and knowing no one would keep these softest promises the lifting of hopes a mistake ever and their gentle dashing the gift of gifts a blossom a bloom the bubbles in her coffee a hissing of trees her tights her shoes needing to pee but not enough to go pee a distant banging of skulls of stone of beams and girders joists and struts the whipping of the wind against the walls of the building four feet deep a cave a cavern buried a wine cellar resisting lunch so the afternoon would go quicker a sneaking suspicion in her belly the slats of a wooden belfry she was full of shit she was going for lunch

fighting with work to be permitted to do her work and the blustering afternoon battering the windows with bits of trees relenting and telling you a joke and regretting it going back to ghosting you a nest torn flapping like millinery a soupy sky the air thick with remorse and higher up directly overhead a small packet of blue sky folded endlessly in paper clouds like a speed wrap her back aching up one side a free coffee past her limit not wanting to be rude not wanting you to know what a bitch she really was but knowing that you knew already going through the motions so you could pretend you still liked one another and that it wasn’t all the way over like a purple tampon a gold rosin dropped on pink terrazzo like this fucked bird’s nest and the eggs blue across leaves and grass and sandwich wrappers their stopped gestation cold and splintered like a glory hole and finding everything bleak and unforgiving she wanted you but you were only part of the bleak and unforgiving everything and she was alone the boy with the curly mustache the girl with the pixie cut the boy with long hair his hooked pole crooked in the shutter slicing the milk-grey light into fingers each more broken than the last

Getting what she’d asked and then having it getting up too early to eat before leaving the house a gin bottle filled with candle wax forgetting she was a witch forgetting her practice the heating going off coming on again her blue bag waiting like a faithful dog accidents that saved time the poop that still wouldn’t come but it had moved along some just beneath her ribs below the navel maybe she’d take something for it a grid of buttons the excitement now only in memory an indulgent smile at her former self as at a grandchild with a queer passion for frogs but what harm had frogs ever done her the memory of yesterday then and her friend their disdain their careers the different stages of which respectively and a small sadness then for passions lost and for thrusting investments therein and having time to kill and no passions only chores and privations and a relative lack of privations more or less achievable remembering Clermont-Ferrand her mathematical pacing of its hilly streets only now she saw herself now stooped the back she had all but broken her back had been a bridge for you to cross and then you all of you but she was straightening up levelling up she was done

a golden quivering in the indigo dusk like threads edging her lingerie the onset of night she needed to pick up groceries her empty life her empty heart an itching around her nipple a tin of carmex your carmex on her nipple a skip in her chest at the sound of vsegda glossier than real life a private joke for a desert island aching in her back in her guts her kidneys a folder of appendices mixed signals no signal at all running on empty running on banana peels and cigarette butts a postcard a castle all lit up like a pyre the pink coating on her flask everything losing its meaning losting its individuality blurring to everything her eyes blurring her back coiling like old rope a bucket of tar the seifuku she’d bought for trick or treat the coat stand thinning like trees alone again or but you only you not talking to you all day and the ponderous message laboured and overwrought spoken only to her diary remaining unsent her love her heart her spoons giving in and scratching her tit a splendour of high windows a coverture the collective treasures of the dispossessed faded strings of tired streamers a sinking and her coat the last leaf of autumn a stranded preposition an elegant chaos the cupboard was bare

Clockwise to whom the gasp of the boiler bringing up gas bringing up baby a fruity coffee where Peru maybe a pill and half a pill the rising temperature like water up to her ears a crisis of neglect how good we were at faking it you’d have thought we’d have made it by now motions all the steps and somehow no dance a recipe wasn’t something to eat remote work virtual meetings made up jobs the drone of the fan the hiss of the fridge a violet glimmer at the foot of the blind time to move

hurt like exploding things like the angel of progress hurt like love in the wrong place at the wrong time love in an office love in the afternoon cis love het love exploding love a love that grows organs new limbs a spidering love that mushrooms a rhizomatic hurt a body without organs as one great plane of immanent suffering a nomadology of pain the spreading hurt of a forest fire enveloping its soft arms around all of life a nuclear hurt like populations like capital like the blood of her enemies dripping from the red soles of her Louboutins an incipience an assemblage of brush work and you emerging your face your lips the pink of your lips wanting to kiss you wanting you to want her to kiss you and kissing you she was gone the walls collapsing a burning light from horizon to horizon burning through the centre of the earth hurtling through space consuming all of space all of the matter in the universe a silver tinkle in her chest like smashed glass and coming down these cables this napkin this plastic box

brown like chocolates like champagne corks twisted wired a sky like corpses bloated flabby the smell of her dead longing and your trousers tight around your butt like her eyes and her arms if only if only the ribs of your sweater wrapped around the curve of you the contour striating you like time slices through your event horizon she was lost in you like light entangled like photons she was putative ontological your knees under the table returning her affected aloofness to her horror and great dismay the colour of water of air of four feet or maybe five that lay across her line of sight to your heart and her cashmere cerise bobbly coating her like blood like a harrowing a ravaging like war she did not know why you were hiding from her and could think of no explanation but the unspeakably cruel

Clammy like a hothouse like bathrooms boiling her cloth a jar of frankincense the red tip of her pencil a screaming guitar smoky eyes a season finale a glass of prune juice her ring a gold pen her chopsticks a yoghurt pot with a spoon sticking out the top how did she know a handle because she’d put it there a spoon traces of blackberries your pain her sympathy tempered by envy and realising after you’d left she had pills in her bag sticking plasters and pills reading glasses a brolly a little can of big hairspray her purse her keys the keys to the office and her locker your locker her hand cream a spoon a lanyard your diary no baby wipes or nappies those days were gone those babies were gone no more tears there was nothing left of her but endurance it was how she kept going it was all she was now a stomping on the ceiling a man shouting through the wall a sawing on the landing feeling vulnerable feeling weak feeling stupid not being used to being stupid and being alternately horrified or amused the same lines in the same places rubbing her belly peeling her tights from the scabs on her heels taking off her necklace before she was too tired a pain in her cheekbones like shame a Turkish pot a wind chime a Finnish stool a Thai futon cats hearts a yellow cord a blue bag of tissue paper

a porcelain sky and golden kintsugi branches cracked across clutching the splinters of her heart making you laugh making herself cry and her head aching like she’d bumped it a bad smell a feminist coffee with notes of reductive biologism her favourite cis person and the panic attack late this year the seventeenth a cable bouclé black black white black her sinus telling her to go telling her to tell you and the porcelain blackening to Meissenware hurting you without meaning and making it better exhausting herself with her own exactitude and the night falling like her velvet négligée like her heart and wishing these people would go home and let her cry in peace and the bottle of wine she was opening from here each step home a turn of the corkscrew but it was her heart she was wringing her heart into her beautiful glassware for you and you didn’t even drink

the tired frost stumbling like drunks from the morning branches louche predictable lines of wood stone fabric ticks on a chart and some sprawling curve but she was lying all she could think about was how close you were the frost the clanging from the construction site everyone else nothing else there was nothing else only you and the distance between you which was everything else and all that she wanted was for there to be nothing not even you to be you to be in you to be sat in your chair in the clothes you wore feeling your quiddity around her an enveloping metaphysics comforting and real the effort she made to dress well so that you’d notice her and your studied indifference and telling herself it only meant you liked her and being frozen in this ontological moment bursting like baloons quiet absolute

the way you spoke the rhythm of it the cadences the music of it your articulation the semantics of it your grammar your breathing your accent the phonemes the stresses and fricatives the labials the velars your mouth your lips your teeth your tongue your body language your body she wanted to learn you to speak you to be fluent in you to comprehend you like a native speaker like sight-reading music like a page of logical formulae grasped all at once but that had been then this was now you were you you were not a page of formulae you were not math syntax meaning syllables plosives or rhotics you were a nail bomb in her heart an untethering you were deracination evisceration you were aphasia deafening blinding the light of unreason of Tiresias you were a brooch for eyes the people who hurt you and made you cry but you made her cry and she loved you

spilling her whole life to someone who wasn’t you being sad being happy being nothing without you she was nothing a flip chart an itch an injection site a sky like cold swabs trailed with blood with branchings trees a family an inheritance map the fractured locus of the colonial difference a lip rim a soiled handkerchief a restless tingling in her shoulder where your head wasn’t an untouched water bottle her solar plexus a lone hair kissing the back of her hand a threadbare sable the old lady and the fox fur Paris in winter a loft in the Marais crooked beautiful the places you’d never share catching a glimpse of a boy she found attractive and finding him wanting a mossy branch green like goblins like mouldy bread green like French rosin then slates grey-green like rust like verdigris oxidised like tea or semi-oxidised an oolong the veins in her thighs crossing her legs the table rattling as she typed killing herself

Sleepy stuffy bloated not doing the housework not scraping her legs letting it slide letting it go barking her little yelps and not speaking her mind leaving her diary open on her desk and going to the loo twitching in her sleep sleeping in her chair cramping hunching dressed like a bag lady a custard tart a wet napkin a purple locker a dollop of something gross watching it for days and wondering why no one cleaned it up and not cleaning it up pains across the shoulders in the shin heels ankle belly cheekbone a sneeze a cough a savoury danish a fruity anaerobic cold roasted broccoli a Camembert a sauerkraut walking in the rain reading Muriel Spark laughing at the gleeful malice of her godhead a sunset a mistake a mistake a mistake the trouble she made for herself and trouble she made for others the ones who deserved it the ones she loved a promised pupper an empty museum leftover sandwiches she knew her teenage angst had been bullshit because she really was dying now and it was not fey affected poetic romantic it was brutal a glare a maggot wriggling on her bag roadworks wet leaves lines and wrinkles a frozen raspberry a fresh blueberry an empty flask going to bed she was going to bed the hairs on her wrists her tits

slate grey slates leaf green leaves red leaves yellow leaves orange leaves a crispy sky cross stitched with finger branches a bug inching back and forth along the window frame a fan heater drying the air drying her sinuses drying her brain dessicating like raisined grapes like cascara a ripasso soak her in must let her sit on her lees let her ripen let her infuse unfurl like leaves of green tea rolled in the full moon between a virgin’s thighs and a Yugoslav girl playing her NTM Nadja à Paris reading Tesich years later reading Wittig listening to hyperpop waiting for replies from people with lives waiting for life waiting for a lifetime she was sore across her shoulders across her belly down her legs she was sore through her bones cold through her bones she was worn through like her threadbare tights twisted around her bruised shins to keep the holes from catching her toes like snared rabbits a poacher a purple damson and hissing adders writhing under the logs your rusting car that smelled of diesel and a bucket of oysters foraged along the shallows and ceps and chanterelles ramson tops your salmon moleskins the grey sky rolling the window rolling her eyes the loss of you of your house of the uncatalogued Magritte on the dining room wall and journalists and spies grumbling in the street but the loss was yours your queerphobic isolation your own exclusion from people who had loved you a moth in a courtroom a watermelon a cloister a carousel

sinking green mossy blackness spidering the oily horizon flickering lost leaves a cracked branch horizontal fenestration a clueless bitchy waste of time a waste of money an expensive inconvenience clouds like alpine passes no one on the other end of the rope at the end of her rope the sick yellow rising to purple a Tuesday cold reflections a penury of expectations the little orange light that said she was here but she was not here she was nowhere and running from nowhere to nowhere still crying and wishing she were dead she was a small black leaf flicked by the autumn wind like a boy flicking her ears and she was tired she wanted to go home she wanted suddenly you you and your soft bosom and your ears to listen to her tears and your quiet presence but deafening absence hard empty noise the dissonance of your absence the violence of her forlorn loneliness bereft and then remembering the old French lady with her lapdog crying in the street a cloud of teargas and big brother watching from every wall black lace like moss like mould the cracking splintered logs flaking cinders and your sad eyes hopeful in the poor light the time she had smiled at you and moved to speak and then gaped only like a fish and the rue in your eyes following her as she’d emptied out onto the street and hailed a fucking taxi

cold light like bleach water like spat toothpaste grey trees like bones glass streaked with dirt a dirty building a squirrel trembling pulling at twigs a window opening glinting steel and the wet light splashed like snot across the canopy browning like coffee beans towards first crack the first crack of winter spitting its coppery phlegm in her face the girl she liked avoiding her crying alone in the office past five staying past five so she could cry alone inching like worms to her leaving date and the anticipated collapse holding the last page closed until until there would never be time she wanted it over with she wanted it to stop a murmur a hum a sniffing the roof slates piled like books for burning a string of felt popsicles greying streamers stuck behind the radiator a wire hanging from the wall boxes piled against boxes amphetamine remembrances a glass raised to her alcohol dependence dangly earrings and tangly hair overwhelmed moved to tears by old coins a whore for coins a whore

stupid people tasking stupid people with stupid tasks wanting to cry crying wanting her friends to see the stupid and crying when they didn’t wanting to tell them and crying instead wanting to tell them she was crying wanting to tell them she loved them and not having the spoons wanting to tell them she didn’t have the spoons and not having the spoons blood grey agonies of slate slipping over the parapet the twitching squirrel again and her heart sinking and wishing she didn’t love anyone wishing no one loved anyone that there were no love in all of the world in all the worlds wet under her arms dry in her sinuses wanting you to be different hating herself for wanting you to be different loving you the way you were but still wanting you to be different missing having lovers spilling from her every pore so she could wish nothing of anyone hating love hating hate loving nothing hating being loved wanting to jump out of the window you were right there all she had to do was to lean over the desk and grab you with both arms and spin the whole fucking world away to hell and hold you and tell you and tell you and she could not the only way she could see to tell you was to jump out of the window a message in blood and bone splintered across concrete and she pictured it now her blood and her savaged body spelling I love you and you fumbling with your reading glasses and distracted by all of the stupid looking the other way and the rain washing her away like so much dog shit and she wanted to be there washed away like so much dog shit but she was here sitting in the clack of your keyboard that bubbled around her like castanets like a gang circling her snapping their fingers the sharks and the jets somewhere somewhere and rigoletto coming to her all at once condensed like a pill like astronaut food and the caro nome sticking in her throat and weeping openly behind her monitor whispering your name over and over and over and over and over

a falling sky sinking over the horizon behind the rooftops blackening trees like a forest fire pitching buildings into dusk a shadowplay and low clouds like sediment like swabs disintegrating in a bucket seeping blood and piss and shit in blue purple pink streaks and the clock a mop relentless around and around gutting the bones of her sadness she was soft empty a jellyfish a medusa the red chimneystacks a burst birds’ nest unconvincing windows absorbing the blue black light the stoic face of a wall socket and the sky bruising like her shins against the furniture of the built environment and she saw herself over it all like an iron giant and rusty water belching out of her cunt and fingering the scarred cityscape like a boy poking her eye and she hated you

Crying looking at ceramics a wall of blue Chinese porcelain overwhelmed cups and coins but the overwhelming was the beauty and joy heightened by her suffering the overwhelming was the depth of her pain and then these towering spikes of wonder amongst it all forgotten women artists a work never exhibited the inexplicable exactitude of it and then looking closer only brushstrokes and finding nothing to explain the magic of it in the technique of it like she had in Vermeer no clue no algorithm to give her the talent to pull it off herself only wonder and amazement and a reflexive love like the beauty captured in the piece itself and then the love infectious viral an exponential love between two women then two women and one woman and then to everyone with whom she’d share it and on women loving women and the overwhelming sadness that all of life could not be this blue cup that made her tremble and that made her want to die a lemon taffy Colombian with scalded milk a curry and yellow rice in a paper box a wooden fork a beautiful boy eating with a slow unbearable elegance and her gloves pink in the foggy blue the red trees a smudge of soft buildings a girl wading in the red leaves that puddled and pooled at the stone steps holding to the flaking iron fence as she rounded the corner afraid to fall falling afraid to be alive to be in love a steepening of familiar hills with age the strangeness of the long familiar and the traffic lights where she remembered them crossing as someone she might have known passed had she only glasses for anything but reading close or reading far the purple flowers a girl sat on a damp bench the light from the porter’s box hoisting her ankle up the stairs wanting to say ’sup bitches and saying good morning wanting you to be there pulling it all together at the last minute and to her own surprise going home again falling asleep in her chair the cold a glass of herby water going to bed wanting you to be there going to sleep

sweating in a tight pink shirt she’d worn because it accentuated her tits the burgeoning panic attack of the week to TDOR frosted slates a messy burrito eaten too fast needing to fart bringing you because she wanted mayhem a boiling coffee burnt toast getting up too early getting ready too early getting to work too early knowing she’d leave too late not making it to the gallery not knowing you weren’t in today chatting in the corridor to nice people about nasty things and with chilli on her face realising only afterward she’d missed your pupper and only then that she’d missed you too a loud man projecting like he were on stage with his mouth full of molten cheese waiting for him to project molten cheese hating him so ghosting his pupper by extension which was her loss thinking of Paris suddenly a specific building in the Marais she couldn’t remember where she could see it feel it the heat from the sidewalk the noise but here she was here clouds forming like a boot on a human face trees alive with rain a spire pricking the sky waiting for it to burst

smalt and terre verte yellow ochre then lamp black and a raw umber an indigo bird scraping across branches of weld wagging like puppers like fingers or shaking like her fingers inching into apprehension as the clock clicked winding coils of tension your beautiful dress and you looking beautiful in it a dead tree like rocks a lil guy keeling over wanting to cry or wanting not to but needing to and everything but the actual tears trembling like fish like milk her twitching fingers clutching at things she couldn’t see overhearing your name and smiling flinching a lead tin stroke holding it at the merest remove keeping it not in abeyance but up her sleeve a crashing suicide disappearing in overcast twilight finding herself as extra as everyone else did her overweening insecurity the shattering surety of her failure comforting soft like old socks with iron nails sewn into the toes five minutes a string of numbers of beads beads with letters on spelling your name and your anniversary two years she was running out of candles

sweating like summer an open window a girl with a husky voice a recipe a ganache hand cream that dried about as fast as a ganache a dacquois a feuilletine a praline a sabayon the hurt of a message unreplied despite having known it would go unreplied and sending it anyway like all her messages her queercoded earrings telling you not to be so nice when she loved you for just that then freezing dressing for yesterday always and the thrill in her chest of deliberately fucking things up and not just her typical stumbling hopelessness almost a sexual thrill let them ascribe her malice to incompetence but she’d probably fuck up her attempts at sabotage like she fucked up everything else your voice your presence the sound of your fingers the thought of your fingers the feel of your fingers the rising in her chest at your lunch invitation and then sinking watching you extend it to abominable others she loved you she hated you she hated herself she loved her body she was tired she needed to lie down the red twist of a discarded blouse her lil guy the pillow stained with mascara too often not washed off and then cried off her reading glasses the headphones without which sleep was not merely unlikely but impossible her ennui in the face even of her own Erisian stirrings a bottle a postcard a key

trying to fuck things up and succeeding and it not mattering because everything else was so fucked up already getting home to a darkened flat and realising her phone was still in the office taking half a bottle of wine out the fridge and going back getting to the subway and realising her card was in her phone case walking there and back again and her wine at serving temperature and skipping dinner forgetting lunch until four thirty forgetting her fucking name fucking things up without trying who was she kidding if chaos was what she wanted all she had to do was to try her hardest to hold it together listening to Miley not giving a shit rasping along she was fucking sick of you sick of loving you sick of herself anymore time between she was drunk

flinching waiting for rain a cursor flashing in the wrong window an inch of air you running from the room when she’d mentioned passing her crush in the corridor and wanting to run after you screaming that she loved you it was time to go her head was pounding a sweater a cold coffee forgetting to drink her water forgetting to compliment your outfit forgetting to tell you she loved you writing a fucking book about it crying going for lunch

A taste a smell like burning flesh like hell like meat four legs bad a pedestrian Sibelius cheeky persimmons remembering smoking remembering you smoking remembering you a guttering candle a job ill done then redone grudgingly and too late your anniversary all the anniversaries pulling her blanket up over her mealy mouth a man yelling through the wall cleaning the house all weekend not leaving the house all weekend her fingertips padding the arc of her clammy sinus a motif poking through the dwam like body parts in landfill your naked flesh trembling pendulous her fingers probing afraid to alter you like wet plaster and your giggling apprehension as she’d run the bath a wooden blind a cliché the painted glass set into the door and the drips from your quivering pinkness puddling in the worn chevron a trumpet expressive controlled the vibrato in her voice as she’d asked you to stay your wet hair on the pillow and the trail of mascara she’d been afraid to wash another vigil another hurt the yellowing of everything about her she was hard she was dry like these grey-calyxed persimmons she was alive

crying at something everyone else was laughing at bleeding trauma she’d processed more horror than a war poet the involuntary pout of her split lip and this smelly boy who wanted to kiss her laughing at the tattling behind her back so that her lip burst again and laughing at the pain plastering over the scabs with her favourite lipstick the blood of her enemies the lacquer on the soles of her red shoes a sky the colour of her knickers trees the colour of her pubes and these slates the colour of her purple thighs showing off and making a fool of herself petrified of being seen making so much noise she was invisible black things white things square things lines angles a stain smeared across the window a round thing a sharp thing a noise the sorrow the wind the branches flipping her the bird the arc of a bridge lit up like a rainbow a crane that looked like a toy flailing losing the wet snot puddling under her septum a shared inbox alone her tights biting her belly a chill a sweat a cursor flashing on the wrong screen her nails her shoes the imminence of her escape she realised she herself was a rabbit