pearl black and ash lilly

I sit in the bath after everyone has gone to bed wearing nothing but my pearl earrings.

I let a cigarette burn away through my fingers, ash falling on the water and floating like fragile Lily pads before they crumble to nothingness. I only get out when the water turns cold and the house is so quiet I cant bear it.

*

I make the decision to leave and never regret it.

cracked vase

We are talking again, always talking talking. The words fall like autumn leaves, dead and decaying and I am left staring at the empty branches. His excuses are waring thin.

"Lets go for a drink?"

There is silence at the interuptal, I've stood up during a well rehearsed speech and announced I'm bored.

"Yeah sure, our usual place?

I smile and nod

*

X looks me up and down as I clink my ice cubes against the heady medicine and let it warm me.

"Do you ever feel suicidal?"

"Of course" I shrug "Who doesn't hold a cracked vase and think about smashing it"

"Its not normal..."

Now I laugh "Show me someone who thinks they're normal and I'll show you a liar"

you are the cosmos

Funny how a three storey house can feel so small. The silence was a deafening thudding in my ears and no matter how many curtains I pulled open my shadows still followed me. I thought about how she had been here, how he had allowed HER into our home.

And suddenly it wasn't my home and I wanted to be far away from it all.

*

I took brioche and tea and sat on a bench in the park and watched people walk by. I stared so long and hard at these ants marching past that my tea went cold and the brioche went untouched.

I fed it to the pigeons. Everyone seems to hate them. Flying rats who carry disease. But humans carry more disease and they get to eat.

should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

I didn't dream last night.

I drifted between wary consciousness and restless sleep. My thoughts were of him, and us, and HER. I awoke to dawn creeping in and the house creaking as it's morning inhabitants stirred.

Something was about to happen.

*

I joined him for morning coffee and knew it was our last. I stare into his eyes, dark and empty as water and try to read his mind but there is nothing there.

I add sugar to my bitter coffee and shudder as the cold day traces its fingers down my back. We make small talk about dinner, the weather, and plans for the weekend but our voices sound so thin the words might fall and shatter around us at any time.

He leaves the house and I am alone again.

secrets

It was easy to pretend everything was the same. I dreamt that it was and I made that dream my reality. I accepted this poor reflection of us and drifted between what we were and what I hoped we would be.
We're fine.

Out with others I put on a worthy performance. He didn't know that I knew. They didn't know any different. I was both the puppet and the puppet master. Pretending was almost as good as the real thing. I clung on to the last fragile strands of our relationship, by the end of the night they had slipped through my fingers. Lying next to him in the stillness I listened to his steady breathing and felt his warm skin against my hand as I clumsily tried to hold his without waking him. I couldn't bear to be near him and couldn't bear to leave his side. I watched him, absorbing every detail and committing it to memory before dawn would arrive and the spell would be broken.

I had to tell him.

I saw forever in the velvet darkness

DreamScape/ The first of many nightmares 1 



Sleep overtook me. My bedside light seemed brighter and my duvet heavier, muffled sounds of the TV next door became distant noise and I released this was it. I cried. Not because it was the end but for everything I couldn’t say and everything that would never be. I pitied myself.

Nothingness surrounded me. The air was neither hot nor cold, dark nor light. I saw forever in the velvet darkness.

I woke up relieved. There was a way out of my prison.  Someone had handed me the key. 


*


I sometimes dream of death as not the end but not a beginning either. It is something free from those restraints, from simple human defination. Death doesnt scare me, living does.