Fifty Odd Words No. 26

I see only one cloud: a far-off thing signalling failure. Failure to react, failure to receive. The air is thin against my throat and the dust fills my eyes with false tears. You hold on out of ignorant respect. I struggle to care, or even flinch at the onset of pain, of night. I feel cold to it anyway.

Fifty Odd Words No. 25

Evanescent whispers escape your voice. Electric whispers cut from promises yearn for a home. Your breath folds into me and slips through to my heart: it crumbles.

I touch a finger to your swollen lips.

Make them words I can trust.

Fifty Odd Words No. 24

You miss a multitude of people and your love is placed on a steeple, for all to see.

You own a rough body.

Cut me a ribbon of your life, sewn out of that place full of sorrow; that town you call home.

Fifty Odd Words No. 23

I fell to Earth without faith. Life brought sensation. I left, gripping your hand, feeling the deep lines of your palm. Your knuckles stretched through flesh. Numbness is a state simpler than pain: it is an absence, and all it can do is slip in, silent.

Departing tasted bitter.

Your company felt: saccharine.

Fifty Odd Words No. 22

Cake please.

There is none.

Her brows knitted and cheeks puffed out.

Humph.

They parted and her eyes shone wide. I could make out the sky in there.

Apple Danish!

Okay.

And she grins

I spoil you too much.

It grows ever wider.

Fifty Odd Words No. 21

Forty five minutes, marching through rain. It turned out to be faster than the bus.

Earlier, I had been on the train, I was going to meet someone. I forgot my phone.

“This. Is an answering machine…” I busted my thumb beating up the phone box.

The blood looked too red to be mine.

Long away...

I have been gone a while, where the internet does not exist. as in: I have moved into my new flat and, unfortunately, we as yet have no internet. Hence the now endangered and rare to find blog post. It will get worse as, on the twentieth of July, I am going away for ten whole days. It is unlikely I will get access before then. Expect sporadic posts.

Ghosts

Do you remember all those nuns from when we were little?

Not much.

They manifested such grace. I loved their hidden smiles and how they used to slip about the school, hands clasped and heads bowed as though they were in a state of permanent prayer.

I hadn’t noticed.

I admired them.

They lived pointless lives.

But they brimmed with all that arcane and mysterious knowledge.

Within the church, yes: but that was all they knew.

I know. I mean: I understand that now. Back then I believed in their power, their secrets, passed onto them by the church – their proximity to God.

They were trophy women for the Vatican.

Perhaps. I see them more as ghosts now.

A cluster of former women, held by their graces, shuffle past the window. They finger rosaries with a devout force of habit, platinum hoops flashing in the muted shades of encroaching dusk. Their lips, soft and untouched except by the word of God, exhale the heady vapours of prayer. Descended and pregnant clouds make ready to break water on their virgin heads.

Baptism of nature.

Do You Feel Like Yourself Again?

I am back. It is the lavender: it returns all my senses to normal, via memory, or else by the punctuated burn of my nostrils. Outside, a car slips past. Voices dematerialise out of ear shot.

“Can you feel my hand?”

A butterfly flutters.

“It tickles.”

“You are still waking up.”

Angled slivers of warmth break through the blinds. I think there is a hint of movement behind there.

“Try squeezing my hand.” - “That's good.”

Birds flirt from tree-tops. More voices, low and authoritative, pass me by.

“Inform the family, if they are still interested.”

“Can you smell lavender?”

“You might feel a little jab. It will only hurt a bit.”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.”

My nostrils burn.

“All done.”

“Can you smell lavender?”

“Now look up at the ceiling.”

Coal miners hunched, pointing torches down tunnels: praying for survivors.

“I can smell lavender, like there are flowers nearby”

Dead canaries can’t sing. Scented pillows?

“Nobody has come to visit in quite a long time.”

No. Well almost. Fresh, damp washing that I can bury my face in. So fresh I almost suffocate. The lavender permeates right through past my eyeballs - even there I can feel it burn.

Fifty Odd Words No. 20

Summer hangs in the room like a crucifixion, saline beads drop to the dust, leaving little grey freckles. They are the tears of my frustrated endeavours. The package would hold were it not for my exertion. It levers, some time after I began, onto the temporary platform.

I am going away now, I will be gone a while.