Dreaming of a White Christmas...

Icy breaths that flood the fine filagrees of my red veins blue; chest aflame from the stale lung-air of cold cadavers just out of the icebox. Oversized hands in too-small mittens that fray at the edges, pink skin scrambling to inch beneath the woolly warmth of coffee-stained palms.

A reindeer nose pressed to the wet pane of big city views; and white origami roofs that light up the constructed yellow night of a snow-swept metropolis trying to close it's eyes on the world. A fire that crackles in the grate like a stock whip; bed hair; white sheet togas that bandage around limbs imprisoned by limbs; a flesh knot held together by a common love for all things merry, bright and giving.

A gift-wrapped heart sits in wait at the foot of a towering pine dressed in his crystal best, while bejeweled emerald fingers stretch away from a five-point chapeau that dances with the brilliant reflection of firelight.

It keeps out my cold.

But then again, so does winter.

Adeste fideles

I twirl the ornament on my left index finger, watching the red glitter catch the light.
If I close my eyes I can even smell Christmas- mangoes, a slight dusty smell of cardboard and tinsel and that something else- that magic something that clings to Christmas and makes you feel warm and tingly.

Or maybe that's just the oppressive heat of an Australian Summer?

Whatever it is- I adore Christmas. The decorations, the carols, the lights on houses, the shopping, the wrapping, the cards, the countdown, the brandy cream, the Christmas teevee specials, the creepy old santa dude's in shopping centres who wave and offer practiced joy and merriment. I love it all.

I like spending Christmas eve in a fit of anticipation, I like being woken at dawn to see the presents and the tree in lovely half light, I like the wrapping paper that litters the living room floor, I like christmas lunch and the too-much food, I like the feeling of being completely stuffed and sleepy, I like having the family around- messing with the gifts, laughing about nothing really.

Christmas is fast approaching and I can already tell I'm going to miss it once it's gone- but years are passing by so quickly, it'll be here again in all it's gift-wrapped, commercialised glory.

I can't wait.

The Invite.

The invite. It made her... something.

Not angry. Red had nothing to do with it. Red would have been welcome; welcoming. Her envelope, the yellow cream of month-old milk, was stamped, instead, with a sludgy grey that made her name look hateful. Vile.

The package was lumpy; soft, and sealed with a plastic sticker printed over with the ill-matched coupling of purple and orange. Almost as ill-matched as they were. It didn't even tear - instead, it peeled off slimily, with the brilliantine resignation of a five-a-throw whore pulling her dress over her head.

The content was confusing. Three strips of paper and a piece of rope? No. It was a folded cardboard card tied with a mustard yellow shoe string. Only it wasn't a shoe string. It was cheap, flammable hemp drowned in artificial dye, and had sticky tape rolled around the edges to keep them from fraying.

Tying the knot. As though the metaphor wasn't tacky enough. How appropriate for them. They should have tied the knot a long time ago...

.

.

a noose.

The tawdry seal emblem was replicated on the opening flaps. The purple glared at her; it made her want to squint. Instead, she glared back. The knee-jerk reaction.

Inside, she found herself faced with a sunset - the Kodak kind that sells for a few bob on the front of a thrift store postcard. Everything was golden. She drew her hand back swiftly, worried that the colour was contagious. The lettering had already fallen victim, and she strained to read it. In so many ways.

A wedding. After all this time. That they had intended to scour her face with it, there could be no doubt. She'd look quite the fool with such a garish blush. Perhaps that's why they made the invitation so foul.

No. It didn't make her angry.
Red had nothing to do with it.

*photospam*

.

Keyboards are abominable creations. The letters are too brazen. Stare by stare, we pass the time frowning at one another, each trying to provoke a reaction. The keys dare me to hit them, and I do. Dupable to the end.

Prints-first, my fingers tap, tap, tap away, not bothering to stop and take stock. Idiots. Every mindless digit. A carnage of A's E's and I's splay across the page. Consonants are scattered about; ink splattered dead on a red, red stage. Words. Who ever let me get a hold of them? Words are for wordsmiths; delicate, and to be used with care. When did I ever heed such a warning?

Do me a favour? Break my fingers?

Headed for a fallout.

I can't think of you without hearing something hiss.

You were always good at hissing. The air rushed through the walls of your teeth with a strange musicality; a soundscape of double-talk and betrayal. I don't know when it was that you became such a monumental hypocrite, but dear, such is life - say 'hello gorgeous' and greet the face in the mirror. We're taking bets on whether you can find yours.

I'm furious at you, really, I am. Bidding me to snap out of this and that - though you're surely an expert on snapping by now, I wish you would bite your tongue; bite it off and never bother me again with your fucking scolding.

Instead, you bray liberally about things that aren't important to either of us anymore. You take what's offered and use it as necessary, discarding the leftovers when they become too heavy for your featherlight loyalties.

The tea's done, the tea's done.

I think I hear the kettle boil.

myskine.

I can picture the tiny, black notebook- its flaccid elastic unable to deter prying eyes.

Shiny and square, gleaming against the lurid vinyl of the train seat.

"Ice-Cream for the Uninitiated.
Two scoops.
Ignorant Bliss.
A sprinkle of Nuts.
Cherry-on-top."

He was beyond ice-cream. He leaned with accusing grace.
Speaking to the girl in the candy stripe pinny and ridiculous hat, over his shoulder.
Who could blame him?
Who could blame me- standing there watching the train trundle away. My poor notebook halfway to someone else now.
Across from the station I was living life.
Weeks of glances, shy smiles, crooked grins (Thank you romance novels)

He was made of guttural sounds.
I was gutter-all.
Missing my train, in this unwholesome alley. One of his hands kept us propped against the wrought iron fence, the other moved up and down with practiced urgency. He was playing an instrument, begging for the right sound. (Oh, curse those romance novels!)

I was watching the air escape me. It unfurled like ribbons and disappeared into the cool night air.

Completely undone.


And all I can picture is the tiny. black notebook.

Of Night.

Deadly night, a shroud of stars upholding
Your pretence of loveliness – do efface yourself.
My ears guard the terrified
Heart, it-BEATS! it-BEATS! but the rhythm’s all wrong.

Paranoia whispers;
Sweet nothings with a savage zest thump
The wrong side of the drum, its pink skin
Straining to hear in the dark.

Dark. You’re always dark.
Pit of black, my eyes are blinded
And barred by lids fused closed,
Clever tyrant. What care you for voodoo

When, in me, you’ve your very own marionette
Swimming the crawl beneath
The covers in a bed-bath of cold sweat
And lachrymation; someone’s left the tap on.

Teeth clench on a pillow, the mouthful of down
Stifles screams that won’t
Stop until daybreak;
Certainly, something has broken.

The New Pen

It began with fresh sheets.
The soft blue cotton smoothed over the shape of us. I had the windows open, and the breeze made the curtains roll like waves. Everything was so pefectly clichéd.

I turned the music up. The Drifters, Solomon Burke, Otis Redding. I couldn't bring myself to listen to anything else. I still can't.

You put the tea cups down on the windowsill and took my hands in yours. Twirling us into the afternoon glow.

Later, laughing, I fell into the closest chair and you handed me a pen. Blue ink, fine tip. Tiny birds scattered along the shaft. Completely tacky, incredibly lovely. I felt an itch to write with it.

To write something. Anything.

So I did.

Your simple gesture was like fixing the washer in the bathroom tap.

Suddenly there's water.

That's the luck of the draw.

We have always been a one-way street.

Red carpeted. Plush.
Just the way you wanted it.
Even so
You would hurl stones through your plate glass windows

leaving me to clean up the mess.
you blamed it on me anyway.

It's getting too hard to take you.
I don't really know how to stand anymore. Propped up against this wall. It's probably asbestos.

but then again, maybe it's you.

I'll bite my tongue. I'll bite my tongue and wait,


that's the luck of the draw right?

The True Lady Luck.

I bear no resemblance to sunrise or starlight,
nor could lamp luster hold to me a candle.
Lightning, lambent embers, a radiant match -
each blaze black unremarkably.

Nothing ever lit up as brightly as I.
You bring that out in me. The shine.
Two years ago, a word from you
lit the day like an oil-bathed wick.
It's a wonder night ever managed to fall.

Nothing has changed.

I ache...

to be able to write again.

I want to let the words spill from every conceivable place.
but they don't. They won't. I ache to know why.

I have to be the kettle today. I have no handle. On any of it.
_____

Dear Diary. Mood: Apathetic.

_____

I just recently read(for the second time) and watched (for the first time) Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist.

It made me miss New York, and I've never even been there.
The book is fantastic. I think I could read it and read it and read it and never tire of it.
The movie- was good too. Michael Cera(!!!) and Kat Dennings were the perfect Nick & Norah, but I didn't like what the writers/producers/directors/whoevers did to the screen play.

If they had translated the book to the screen exactly- It would have been creamed-honey-fan-fucking-tastic.

Oh well.
---------
'I shouldn't want the song to end. I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a sinle song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist.'

--------

Well, that's all folks.
All I have to offer. A wishy-washy non-excuse and some kind of film/book review.


Better luck next time eh?

Shut the fuck up and leave me alone.

I ache for silence; for wet stockings, dripping hair and the joy of catching cold without interruption. I ache for the hungry stomach that goes unchallenged; for sunrise bedtimes that evade comment, and for tapered cigarette smoke out of my kitchen window.

Breeze-whipped ankles and bare feet on footpaths after dark strike me with longing. I ache for solitude; for pajamas rendered useless and for candlelit blackouts at 3am. I ache for the tin rooves that sizzled in summer; for mornings heralded by 100 watt windows that venetians merely decorated, and for concrete stairs that climbed high as my pulse.

I ache for warm evenings that fell like stars; for the plants that withered under my dutiful attention, and for the jubilance of hailing a cab at first light.

I ache for the weekends that passed without words; for unplugged phone lines and for doors locked against the world. I ache for a shower with the light turned off; for hardwood floors on sticky nights, and for eating straight from the pan.

I ache for lights left lit and dripping taps; for too-loud music and silence, silence, silence in spite of the noise.

Reality Bites.

Sometimes it's better not to ask. I laugh as I think it, but the sound is short-lived and hedged with bitterness. There's nothing funny about incapacitation.

Nervously, I slip a fingernail between my teeth. It's snack time for the panicked. I've been thinking. Plotting. Trying to find a way to have things work out for the best - best for me, of course. I know your mind far too well to expect success here. You think me erratic and baleful - too volatile for the pink-tinted world that you work tirelessly to manipulate. You are your own god, and yet you believe in nothing - not even yourself. Certainly not in me.

The thought of it - of escaping with you - nothing ever sustained anybody so completely. It is all that has been keeping me going. I dine nightly on my own misery, desperate to make it disappear - but it's bad for the system and always resurfaces in the morning.

Sometimes it's better not to know. I can almost hear your answer now. Only it wouldn't be an answer, really. It would be an amused sort of incredulity, sharp and silver, the final nail in my heavy, wooden sleeping bag. A perpetual resting place. I can picture you shaking your head, just as you did last time...the last idea. The need wasn't nearly so pronounced that time - the straight-faced no, a kick to the gut, it didn't hurt so much. Not as much as this would. Not nearly as much. I caught my breath that time.

No. Sometimes it's better to pretend. If I can keep myself selfishly believing that one day, things will be just as unbearable for you...if I can keep myself clinging to the thought of you, my freshly-painted life-saver, a bright patch bobbing merrily along the surface, maybe then I'll manage to keep myself together.

But the pieces are falling fast. I only have two hands, each as inept as the other at holding onto anything at all. I never could juggle. I have to get away before I drop everything...let go...

A bird in a cage, I can't stand being here. Upon reflection, it was stupid. Coming here, wanting this. I am my own special plague, hungry to conquer; incapable of leaving anything but destruction behind. Things are different with you.

You won't want to. I know it, and I know I'll hate you for it. And I couldn't bear to hate you. So I won't ask. Not yet. Maybe never.

We'll see.

Institutionalised.

Hand in hand. Eyes closed. It's what she wanted all along.

The others had laughed. They were the type for it. Or perhaps they weren't, and that was the problem. Either way, she saw them as straight-road people. The type of road you can see along for miles and miles and miles until the horizon cuts in; a purple faced hopeful who never did manage to print his name on the dance card.

She couldn't bear the thought of it. Of that type of life. Fuzzy, street-cam scenery set on a five year loop, only each time the film is worse...more difficult to decipher. Everybody looks older. In fact, everybody gets older. They have aspirations. Cook, clean, sit and die. It's just a piece of paper. Why complicate life with living?

She wanted it if only for the distraction. Death. A perpetual deadline. It would come for her eventually. Perhaps suddenly, with a bang and a clatter...perhaps not for a while - a sigh on the stalk, ready to volunteer itself as the last in a long, long line. She didn't know - couldn't know anything other than that there was no avoiding it. Experience wouldn't buy her immortality - not the valuable brand of it, anyway - but it would buy her satisfaction. Better yet, it put a few bends in the road; a left turn here and there, and she could duck out of grim sight, even if only for a moment or two.

Hand in hand. Eyes closed. It's what she wanted all along. It's just a piece of paper. She knows it - she barely glanced when they asked her to sign. But it wasn't the paper that mattered - not the paper, the dress...not even the ring.

It was the excitement. The difference. Time is cruel - a year, tedious. One must suffer through 365 days, most very similar to the one before, and so it goes and goes and goes until ring around the rosie, we all fall down. An engagement gave her something to differentiate from simply being. To look forward to.

Besides, it conjured a fantastic sensibility. The happiness was heroin to her - something to be abused until supply ran out, or else, until it damn near killed her. She was hooked - wired by the planning, by the panic. To imagine missing out on it! Gold coins slipping through invisible fingers that grabbed and missed angrily. Eyes closed to falling snow. The absurdity was nauseating!

And at the same time she was terrified. A steady lead-up of nervous flutter and pedantic organisation and it would be done with - over in a brilliant crescendo of white taffeta and violets. She would be back to where she started - searching for another distraction; a career; a baby - anything to magic her world of impermanency and farce into a more durable existence. To make it mean something. She frowned at the thought of it.

But as he smiled at her over the three-tiered cake, she was very suddenly at ease. No. The others, they were wrong. They, the have-alls, were content with being, because it jeopardised nothing. They valued monotony.

Right then, she didn't care that marriage was a cliche. She had gone tree-climbing in purple silk dresses, hooked rod in hand, and the hope in mind that perhaps, if only for a day, her world might spin in a different direction.

She would throw the wedding certificate out. It wasn't important.

Everything else had been.

Despite what They say, you can judge a book by its cover.

Cold hands and football socks.


A stack of books and piles of papers. French doors. White curtains. Milky coffee. Hair that goes on and on and on.

Listening to Blondie does not make you edgy.


Your hand, his hand. I couldn't tell anymore.

Your cool indifference never seemed so practiced. Pretty young things like you stand, waving glowing embers in the semi-darkness and hurling hyena cackles at the cars that pass. You’re too uncovered to keep it in. Your regrowth, your too-white thighs, you grin and bare it all. Oh dear. Mascara never looked so much like liquid eyeliner.

'Hollow and glamorous. It was ironic really, the way she took in cigarettes as though her life depended on it. She was a perfect mix of contradictions. How she managed to pull off those red, sequined stilettos with even half the grace she did is still beyond me. Vulgar and gorgeous all at once. She carried men like handbags, on the arm and never the heart. The way I remember her changes a little every time. She's always on the balcony though. It is always twilight and it always the tiny glowing end of the smoke in her hand that makes her real. It was too easy to confuse her with the images on the wall. '

Things fell apart, he left with a suitcase you couldn't fit inisde. He took you anyway.

It was harder to look up to you then. Mostly I stayed behind half closed doors.

The glass was half empty. The milk was out of date.

You sit with your cigarette [why is that image so inextricably linked to you?] and your blossoming Moleskine playing Peter Sarstedt over again.

Dangerously close to your edge. I dangle with chipped nails and jagged teeth, clawing at nothing.

Gravity will let me down when you do. Again.

Literary Damnation.

Drip.
Drip.
Drip.

Words as water. They
leak from the open mouth of
a red-crusted pipe;
leaving filthy, orange
scum rings on the brittle,
grey walls of my skull.

Thought interrupts thought;
each snide interjection
the white-hot brand upon
Redundancy's ripe rear.
Wait your turn!
Selfish girl! Selfish girl!

A flash in the pan, little
poem, little poet - that's
all you ever were and will be;
boiled potluck in
old Medusa's cauldron
full of muck and madness.

An ovum untouched,
my mind rots; the bloated
head of a putrid cow floating
along the river.
Dead water. Dead water.
This poet's done for.

Fishtail.

Relevance has little to do with it.

I wish I could put on another pair shoes.
I think mine are too comfortable. I like to look down and see my white capped sneakers. My feet feel safe wrapped up in the familiarity of the blue cotton.

But...is there such a thing as too safe?


I'm 19 now. A year older and none the wiser.


Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life. Well, small, but valuable. And sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer.
I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void.
So goodnight, dear void.

Feels Like Autumn Again.

Nothing ever felt so perfect.

Pulling on a worn, knitted beanie. 5 shades of content. maybe more- it's quite loved.
Taking your hand in mind. Cold, but okay. Refreshing, like the breeze that tangles what little of my hair it can get at.

Your sneakered feet take on the leaf litter. You are the king of the world and every satisfying crunch only confirms it.
I feel like your smile. I am the mirror image of your laugh.
I can feel my heart swelling and I love it all the more.

The small black notebok sits open on my lap as I watch you wandering away. Aimlessly- lost inside some other world you have created. The weak autumn sun falls through the diminishing trees. It illuminates you. You illuminate. The sun here is so strong- I can feel every line of you.
And my words don't make sense. The only things that make sense anymore are you,
And this beanie,
And the sound of the leaves revelling in our bliss.

Autumn.

In an impressive show of onomatopoeia
the cold has snapped once more, and
I am whole again.
The sun redeems itself, and warms to suit,
instead of to swelter.
Everything is crisp. The leaves. The air. The wind.

My mind is set racing...it wants to escape from
months of languid summer crawling. Nothing
moves in the heat.

I find that I can write again...that I can breathe again.

How I love autumn.

Emma's Comprehensive List of Injustices.

1. The name Renesmee.
2. The Genocide Studies class that is too full for me to now enroll in.
3. The timing of my writers block.
4. The fact that Twilight is now only showing one session a day, and yet, is not available on DVD for me to peruse at my own pleasure.
5. The sense of equilibrium I was 'blessed' with.
6. The high chance that I will genetically inherit my mother's thighs.
7. The bogus nose I have. All the better not to smell you with, my dear.
8. Global Warming.
9. The melting of snow, and in fact, the existence of Summer and Spring altogether.
10. My love for Cabriolet Crysler Cruisers juxtaposed with the unmerciful amount in my bank account.
11. My penchant for nachos and mint icecream, in direct review of point number 6.
12. That Edward Cullen is real to me only throughout non-waking hours.
13. That it does not snow in Sydney.
14. That my year 12 excursion to Rome was inexplicably cancelled.
15. That Meryl Streep has been nominated for 14 bloody Oscars, and as yet, has won only 2. Unfair to the max!
16. That seasons 1 and 2 of The Nanny have been released on DVD, and yet, the four delightful seasons remaining are still confined to tape.
17. That I now live nowhere near my two favourite stores in the world: Berkelouws, and Vinnies (which in Paddington, was three stories high!)
18. That I dropped avacado onto my new (and favourite) jeans yesterday, and am having extensive issues getting it out.
19. That I have to wait so long for the remaining three Twilight movies to be released.
20. That my year 12 business teacher gave me 99% in an assessment [placing me 2nd], because she thought that it would encourage me to 'Strive harder in my class' - WTF?!! Worst injustice EVER!

Ah, life is so unfair.

Burst.

He throws his rattling laugh at her. Unintentionally perhaps, but it still has the same nails-down-a-chalkboard effect as it bounces down the hallway. She grits her teeth. Clenches maybe? No, she clamps her mouth shut trying to subdue the hate that bubbles like acid in her stomach. She can feel it eating a hole clean through her.



It wasn't fair.



He had gone ballistic when he discovered the letters, words, sentences she had scratched into the backs of the doors. Things she had read, lyrics that got stuck, names of people that filled her head, going around and around."She had trusted many, but been unfamiliar with almost everyone but you." It scared her to have a mind so full- It felt like being on the boat in "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory" with Gene Wilder muttering away.

The only way she could fix it was to lay on her stomach in the half-darkness at dusk and scratch them out. "What happens in the heart simply happens."
Day after day for weeks she had methodically emptied her thoughts in the quiet rooms, while he sat, clutching a warming beer and watching mindless televsion.
Out of sight, out of mind.

He hadn't caught her in the act. It had been an unfortunate accident, the way the afternoon sun climbed in through the slanted blinds lighting up the raw markings like a neon sign in his peripherals."Gustav Flaubert"

Ballistic.



What hurt the most though, was when he took the desk key that she had used. It was a small, brass key her mother had carried on a red ribbon. After her mother left, she had taken it upon herself to be the keeper of the key. She had worn it around her ankle, and without the comforting weight- she felt lost. Like she had been cast off, into the same royal blue abyss her mother inhabited.



But she hadn't been cast off. She was tied to him by a thin red ribbon, reeled in by his rattling laugh.
Sitting at the end of the hall, curled like an unborn child, that laugh filled her until she thought she would burst.

Goddamn Summer.

Heat.

It broils beneath the surface of my tortured scarlett pores. Like the firefly, I too now pulse with a glow through the darkness; I am the light behind an open oven door.

My body - coloured red with the finess of a kindergarten savant - pulses vibrantly with pain, and will, I know, continue to change hue. Once a healthy alabaster, the angry primary will, sooner or later, give way to bilious yellow blisters that pop to leave behind raw, pink rings, and grey scales of dead skin. These I shall scrape away, just as one scrapes the blackened corpse of over-cooked toast. I relish the thought.

I feel rubbery and swollen - a basketball brilliantly baked by febric asphalt. Heat eminates from me as the bleak stench of decay eminates from a bloated corpse. I can see it creeping across the room, its gummy hands unpocketed and trailing over everything. Hot to the touch.

How I long to roll about in snow! To sizzle and steam until cooled and happy. Alas, I can do nothing but swelter and complain until the ruby layers rot.

I loathe summer.

Swelter.

The world is in slow-motion. It's like being submerged- I can feel the damp tendrils of hair snaking their way down my neck, trying to find a reprieve. Sweat pools in every concievable place. Inconceivable places. The air is gelatinous. I just want to escape.
I fan myself with ratty, dog-eared books piled up beside the bed. I sweep my fingers across salty skin, trying in vain, to absorb the liquid heat.
Flowers wilt. Posters peel. Feet expand.
My skin is soggy. All the water in the world has been dragged through hell and left hanging in the air- shimmering and damp. It clings to everything.

_____

I wake, wondering when we got a waterbed. I wonder why the water bed is leaking.
The darkness has disoriented me. I am scorched and thirsty. I must have become a vampire. This heat is not humanly possible.
Everything smells like salt and skin.
Sitting up, I run my thumb across your brow, your lip, your collar-bone. You are still there, hidden beneath a blanket of Summer.
Damn Summer. When will this ease up? Nights are meant to be cool, I want to be tangled up in you, but this heat makes me irritable. Some twisted part of my brain must tell me that being a bitch will lessen the invisible flames that are eating me alive. But nothing helps.
I'm prickly and hot and I'm sorry.

_____

That Star- Ted Hughes

That star
Will blow your hand off

That star
Will scramble your brains and your nerves

That star
Will frazzle your skin off

That star
Will turn everybody yellow and stinking

That star
Will scorch everythig dead fumed to its blueprint

That star
Will make the earth melt

That star. . .and so on.

And they surround us. And far into infinity.
These are the armies of the night.
There is no escape.
Not one of them is good, or friendly, or corruptible.

One chance remains: KEEP ON DIGGING THAT HOLE

KEEP ON DIGGING AWAY AT THAT HOLE.

Obstinate.

It wasn't like losing an eye in the midst of having fun-
The splinter slipped in quietly, nestling under her skin. It wasn't til later, with the hot sun setting on another summer afternoon, that it made itself known. The day had been great as usual- escaping the house for the entire day always was. They would play in the empty block at the end of the street, take trips to the corner shop to slurp ice-blocks that were blissfully inexpensive, lay down on the baking concrete driveway, pretending they could shrink clouds into nothingness (simply finding shapes in the sky wasn't enough for them).

It wasn't til later, pulling the garden gate closed behind her, she felt the tiny, throbbing pain that was the fraction of wood that had become a part of her. Squinting, she examined her finger.

She pushed her forefinger gently with her thumb. Thrilling at the jolt of hurt she felt. The culprit had been found. She was shocked by the ache this tiny fleck of black could cause. Biting her lip, she considered her options. No doubt- the splinter had to be removed. She couldn't bear the thought of it finding its way into her blood stream, destined to pierce her heart. It had enough puncture wounds as it was.


The missing car meant her mum wasn't home from work yet, but the electrical buzz of the tv alerted her to the fact that her father was. There was a time she would have called out for his help. Needed him.
Once upon a time. But it was hard to remember that far back.

The splinter throbbed again. It was annoyed her thoughts had strayed.

Ignoring the imminent tears, she raised her finger to her lips and sucked out the poison.

Impossibility.

Everything is always different with you.

I would that I could will you into a soldier of my own battle tactics...whittle your mute point - always sheathed - into something infinitely more blunt.

But there is no changing you.

It always begins with a splinter. With a small injury you derive from the ceaseless sawdust I rattle off in oblivity, six syllables to the second.

The point of entry is unremarkable - a thin layer of skin acting as trapdoor to the earthy intrusion. Mole-like, it burrows deep into your flesh until tightly lodged, and invisible to the anxious steel tweezers I set a-pinching. I am adept at getting under your skin.

Cannot this be the end of things? If only you would alert me to your casualty, that you would holler and scream, your face a blueberry mess. If only you would force your hand before my face and have me study every tender blemish. I'd have the mongrel out in a second!

But you prefer to hide those hands inside kid gloves that bunch, childlike, into fists within the denim walls of your pockets. You allow the splinter to fester into a vividly crimson Vesuvius - just as lethal to the citizen. Infected, the hand swells monsterously, until your entire, unfamiliar self pulses with septicemic rage. It does not become you.

Frustrated and with sharpened silver at the ready, I begin to dig, desperate to loosen your tongue.

Your hurts become evident, they become airborne as you spit hardened chips at me to catch me unaware. You aim for the eyes, but I assure you, they are already incapable of seeing. Before long, and long before I have a hope of curing you, you harden against me into wood that bruises my hands as they reach out to you.

You are angry - drained of yourself, and dry enough to please an eager tinderbox.

And I - I am left, battered and unhappy, in wait of your fickle magnanimity.

What exactly have I done to you this time?

Procrastinator Savant.

I will. I will. I will.

The syllables appeal, and roll
off the tongue like marbles
on an oil-slicked slope. Like
bare bottoms on a well-waxed
slippery slide.
I delight in the concept of later,
and find no gift in the present.
It is the open mail that arrived
an hour ago - unfulfilling and dull.
It cannot be imagined into something
more - not farfetched isoscoli of
love, nor a polished script pegged
to the stern black line as it's antithesis.
There's time a-plenty. Anything could
happen ten minutes from now.
Until then, I think it best to
toast the meantime with a crystal
glass, cherry-topped and guarded from
the rain.

I will. I will. I will.

Indubitably.
Eventually.
Ultimately.

Obs.

I smooth my hand over the glossy cover.
I pick it up. I fan the pages.
I flick through it again and again-
inhaling that timeless 'book' scent.

I bite my lip, thinking about what's happened, what's happening- what is going to happen.

I leave this blog unfinished because, I am obsessed, and I have a book to read.