SECOND SIGHT

Her fingers cast shadow branches across the wooden floor, as she held them to the light.

Sunspots marred her vision. From the ground she heard whispers: ‘Is it him?’

She convulsed violently on the floor, shaking her way out of poverty’s iron grip.

Their grief was palpable, hungry, and blind.

They clucked in anticipation as she sprung bolt upright, head back, eyes rolling.  She bellowed, in the deepest voice she could muster, ‘Yes, darling it is me’.

Dust fell from her like glitter in the sunlight.

She heaved and sweated and sucked all the air right out of the room, feverish in her deception.

Desperation turns us all into whores.

She heard someone fall to their knees and then a sharp snap as a coin purse opened. ‘There is no guilt to this duplicity’ she thought, as a tiny glint of hope reappeared in two eyes made of sorrow.  

THE PERIPHERY OF LIGHT

 We move through dense clouds

Of misty doubt and dewy emotion.

Unguent viscous rain drips raw feeling into our eyes

As we search for that break,

That flash of light.

One day you wake up right out of a cold reverie

And you realise,

No one ever looks at me anymore,

No one ever looks at anyone anymore.

Stone cold feelings, like you’ve lost.

The loss of nothing

The loss of everything.

One day, you wake up and think:

‘No this isn’t right’

Life knocked you off your feet,

Kicked you when you were down.

But, one day, you wake up and…

BOOM!

There’s that break in the clouds.

That golden beam of hope

Just pushing through the thick heavy dullness.

Suddenly it’s worth it.

It’s worth all the darkness

The doubt

The fear

The pain

It’s worth it all

Because that one beam of sunlight

Is breathing life into everything it touches.

Then you realise that no one was looking at you

Because no one could see you

You were clothed in grey and shadow.

So you get up and you dust yourself off

And you shake the cobwebs from your battered skull

And you step up

And you step out

And you step into the light.

And now you are clothed in gold

Wings stretched out for flight

Like Icarus, daring the sun to melt your wings.

All the while knowing that unlike Icarus,

Your time in the gloom means the light will never take you.

It will merely surround you, and carry you, should you decide to let it.

You’ve learned not to fly too close,

Just to skim the edges,

To graze the periphery

And to fly

Fly, fly fly. 

MOTHER MARY

He said I was an angel.

Clothed in a veil of blue.

He told me I should please him like the other virgins do.

He said to call him Gabriel

That he was sent from heaven above

That what he did was righteous

That it was an act of love.

And now its nine months later

What a story I have told.

Of messengers from heaven

With beating wings of gold.

Of saviours, saints and sinners,

Of babies born of God

Of divinity and holy ghosts

It struck no one as odd.

Least of all my Joseph.

My man so good and strong.

He’s guided me on donkey’s back

To Bethlehem this morn.

To give birth to this child

Placed in me by a cad,

Whom I have dubbed an angel

But all in him is bad.

He said to call him Gabriel,

That he was sent from heaven above,

Well I know now he was no saint

In him there was no love.

He placed his seed in my belly

So I had to spin a yarn,

Adultery would have brought me death,

Instead I give birth in a barn.

But I’ll raise this baby in good faith

And as a saviour of men,

He will be the son of God

And he will save me then.

For all my sins will be absolved

And my shame will be my own

As I give birth to Jesus Christ

My Son, my saviour, my home. 

DISASSOCIATIVE

“I mean it’s really all about not allowing oneself to disassociate from ‘the self’, you know? It’s all about mindfulness.” Her pseudo-intellectual psychobabble paused momentarily, allowing the opportunity for her to pick up a large piece of wilting celery and chew it with her mouth half open.

Her jaw bone must be slackening after all the incessant talking. I think that and smile in spite of myself.  

I think that I might hate this woman. For no real reason other than her sheer banality. That and the fact that she used the phrase ‘mindfulness’.
She’s desperate for otherness, but she’s always been too mundane to garner any amount of attention or notice.

She tried for years to be something. Punk, feminist, anarchist, activist, but  she’s a coward without the courage of her convictions, so now she just sticks to seeking attention through her diets and how loudly she can speak about them.

She never hesitates to tell you how simply awful that sandwich is that you’re in the middle of devouring for your lunch, or how utterly fabulous her morning kale and carrot smoothie makes her feel.

I look at her for a long time. Studying the way her body moves, the way she over uses her hands when she speaks, the way she holds her mouth in an ugly curl to try and hide the black stain on her front tooth. I watch as her pentagram necklace (a hangover from her wiccan period) dances just above her cleavage as she pushes her lank mousy hair from her face.

 I begin to think that she is the single most unattractive thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.

It all becomes too much for me. The talking, the celery, her mouth, her hair, her necklace, they suddenly all seem magnified and she begins to look like a parody of herself.

I have to get out of here, so I just stand up, stare at her for a moment and walk away without uttering a single word to her.

 I leave her to foot the bill for my double chocolate mocha chino with caramel syrup and whipped cream. This makes me grin madly and as I leave the coffee shop, I burst through the doors and break into a run, all the while grinning and never looking back.

PROTECTIVE

I opened my chest cavity with no regard for the fact that my heart might spill out. I delicately pushed my spindly fingers through skin and bone and muscle and ligaments until I had created the gaping wound you see before you.

It sounds poetic. Like liquid syllables and molten words. It’s not. It’s ugly. I opened myself up to keep something safe and sacred. Sacrificed my pumping blood to cover someone else’s shame.

I threw myself on the tracks for a promise of an uncertainty and I’ll take that with me to my grave. Where I’ll lie, with an open chest, and a broken heart, with your rusted key imbedded in my bones. The key to your heart, to your secrets and lies. I’ll take it with me when I go and I’ll wear a black mourning veil until you return, or I die, which one ever happens first. 

CORNERED

He’s a wolf in wolves clothing. He makes no bones about his malice. It slides from him. Slithering from that overly saccharine smile.

“How do I always get cornered by you?” I say it aloud as though he might answer, he just pushes forward, backing me into that corner and snarling his muffled snarl. I watch our silhouettes dance along the concrete wall. Like two young lovers, making music with our bodies. How different everything looks in black. What it really is seems almost unbearable to me.

I hear the zipper go down. His sweat drips onto my forehead.

“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in”. I say that aloud too. He looks at me, confused, the metaphor lost on him. He pulls out, zips up, slamming the door behind him.

“How do I always get cornered by you?” I whisper it now to the dark. 

DOLL HOUSE

The lifeless porcelain face shone through plastic under harsh fluorescent lights. The eyes seemed to follow you.

She hadn’t even wanted to be brought here. She was more interested in the boys’ aisle. With trucks and guns and loud banging, bleeping, blooping noises that sounded like hours of endless fun. 

But to please her mother, here they were looking at dolls. Her mother said little girls who play with dolls turn out to be proper ladies. She thought that was stupid.

She thought everything on this aisle was stupid, until she saw it.

It was wondrous. Stood out on its own, as big as her it was. Snow white walls with a brown wooden roof. Tiny glass windows looked in upon tiny furniture, tiny tables with tinier cutlery on top. A tiny grandfather clock and a tiny four poster bed. She had never seen anything like it! She felt as though she should be small enough to fit inside it. The world felt too big for her sometimes, and after all wouldn’t that make sense? Wasn’t she just like her mother’s doll? To be taken out and played with and shown off and primped and preened whenever there were visitors round for afternoon tea.  

At least if she fitted in this house, she would have somewhere of her own to go when her mother got bored with her. She thought it would be only right for her to have her own little house for her own little dolly self!

But her mother called her away. She said nothing. She never did, children should be seen and not heard after all. A few minutes later, she left the toy shop with the creepy porcelain doll under her arm, and the tiny little grandfather clock, secreted away in her secret pocket of her dress and an even more secret smile on her face.