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 The milk was out of date.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.