All 3 entries tagged Creative

… but I do love you.

I love you ardently, violently. I hate to love you. I love you so much I want to strangle you in an embrace. I want to suffocate you in perpetual passion, steal your breath by the fierceness of a kiss, burst your breast with the lava of my love, break your neck with my neediness, smash your skull with my sweet nothings, pull apart your arteries with adoration, scar your face with my fondness, devour your mind in devotion, tear out your hair tenderly... but I do love you.

: 05 Feb 2010 15:46 |  Tags: Creative |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

An Early Grey catastrophe.

I do not what overcame me, perhaps the shock of the burn from the piping kettle steam, cunningly cool to the touch at first, but then suddenly clawing an additional scar into my arm. It stings still, nestling beside my war wounds, one from being sent to my death with only a poorly designed oven glove for armour, that left my freckled wrist exposed, a white gash, singed with pink, now left. Another from a wedding reception, crying in a B&B amongst yellowing, floral wall paper, because my first boyfriend told me he didn’t believe in “the entrapment of marriage”, and so the wine glass shattered, and I accidentally on purpose dug a shard into my engagement ring finger, an attempt to hollow out the gap I feared, at just 14, would be forever vacant.

The shock of the kettle steam was alluring at first, not so much a shock but the sudden remembrance of physical pain, an externalised sensation I was thankful to feel. I do not know what overcame me, but I thought of you, my legs suddenly weak, and my cheek unexpectedly laying on the orange linoleum floor, my eyes focusing on the world from this new perspective, a foreign land of autumn leaves, curled red onion skins and snowflakes, of coriander, sugar and salt, gently exfoliating my bare face.

I had not fainted, but suddenly succumbed to a captivating glimpse of the past, overturning the myths played out in my head to romanticise an already fairly dreamy childhood, to unearth a discarded snapshot of domesticity. You were making tea in the kitchen of your first cottage (well, not your first, but the first home of yours I can recall), and the cat, not yet fat from your love like the previous had been, with the majestic nonchalance of feline pride, leapt upon the tiled counter, knocking the just-boiled water over your elbow. You were leant placidly on the counter, that pink and wrinkled elbow, blanketed in excess skin, supporting the chubby arm and surprisingly delicate hand that placed the cigarette in your mouth, bathed in the lava of an Earl Grey catastrophe.

You did not flinch, but shut your eyes very slowly, as though wearing your death-mask and an impassive funeral director was respectfully shielding your dead gaze from the living world. The cat, Lionel, was unaware of his part in the disaster, and arched his back obliviously, scaling the net curtains to finally wriggle out of ever so slightly open window, cleverly left open for his escape. That cigarette was held between your pierced lips for what seemed like an eternity, and I remember I did not get up from the make-shift kitchen table, consisting of a cracked plastic garden table and two wooden stools. I remained still also, awaiting a reaction.

You relished that pain, and taught me to relish it that day too. After several seconds you moved your arm from the counter, and stubbed the cigarette out in the sink. Your hand waved in front of your face, dispelling the smoke, and you apologised for the habit, asking me not to tell my Mother you’d started again. You turned, your elbow almost bubbling in pain, and poured what was left in the kettle into two china mugs depicting bluebirds. “Just enough left in the kettle for the both of us.”

You sat down at the table beside me, absent-mindedly spooning too many sugars into your tea and raining the grains down across the white plastic surface, like you were gritting it for snow, making it safe for me. You were my aunt, and today I thought of you. I do not know what overcame me, but the kitchen floor felt cool on my skin, and I remained there, curled up momentarily, comforted by the misplaced recollection. I then sighed, tutted just like you would of, and climbed downstairs to smoke a cigarette in the Warwickshire snow.

: 13 Jan 2010 22:19 |  Tags: Creative |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Haunting me on the bus home.

The sky seems to crunch like broken glass and syringes, a wild cosmos. I left via the emergency exit of the dingy club we’d drunk our sorrows in, romance on her sickbed since that 99p Valentines card travesty in February. It is a staircase I climb, yet it is of no shape or colour, no substance. I simply seem to mount the sky, a kind of broken glass suspended in space. I move quickly, stealthily, hunting something way up there, in the black infinity. Raw egg drips down my chin, frothy yellow poison, a rabid dog. I’m sure it’s vomit, from an over-zealous attempt to drown something troublesome within with vodka and daiquiris.

The sky seems to flatten here and I am calmer now, there is no sound of buses reminding me to go home. The universe seems to unfold and I inhale colours that had been left off of the curriculum. A perilous shade of pertileena, a mist of mysul and a hue of beautiful tomkinf bathing my body. My five senses explode into seven. It is like everything and nothing makes sense at once, as though I am drinking from the fountain of knowledge, hydrating my soul. Yet with this knowledge, my sorrow grows greater, burning a hole in my chest, reminding me of the inhuman thing I did and have done and continue to do.

I can feel the rain, a thunder storm, but there is no wetness, no water to wash away this decaying sense of doom. My skin itches, I want to scratch it off, those 7 freckled layers, this paper membrane that carelessly contains this wretched soul. Exorcise me heaven, purge me of my wrongdoing. Where are the buses now? Let me go home and sleep this off. It’s just the alcohol. It’s just the alcohol.

There is a bell echoing, somewhere in my head I think at first, but it is more distant than that. Perhaps my mind is distant and they’re gone riding together, on a jaunt around the universe, my bleeding brain sat in the basket of the bicycle, wearing a straw hat.

I can see it now and a boy riding towards me through the sky, illuminated by a plethora of colours. I am sure I drank with him tonight, stooped over the dirty bar, sticky with whisky rings, the illegal smoke of cigarettes that should be in the mouths of strangers in the rain outside, drifting over our heads. His curls obscure his eyes, but they glint occasionally, in unison with his smile, somewhere between mischievous and lethal.

“I know you, yeah, English girl, throwing all that bizarre vocabulary at me and asking all those probing questions. I guess I’m famous now right?” He laughs, but I don’t catch the joke. The sky beneath my feet suddenly feels less stable. It’s like my body is swinging, a child stood on a swing with the shattered glass of drunken youth beneath.

“Don’t look so scared, I’m a friendly guy. Yeah, you know that. You made me feel really welcome the other night.” I just knew he knew. You know when you just know? That glaring smile that was so calculating, strategically stretched across his glowing cheeks. He was handsome, but only recently aware of this. It was the way he stood, so familiar with this place, as though his kingdom. I was suddenly the one being questioned, judged, persecuted.

“So you know?” my lips tremble, my knees fail me, and I submit to him, as though he’ll show me mercy, as though he is my God and I am not worthy, and I’m not. Not since he knows, not for what I’ve done. I hear the water in his mouth like the cracking of thunder and his foamy spit lands just beside me, I don’t know if purposefully or not.

“Yeah, actually. I didn’t expect you to be the type to do a thing like that. I dunno, you just seemed so together and open. Controlled.” He comes closer, but I can only see his feet. “Did you think you were living life? Did you think it would make you feel something when you did that? It’s vulgar. God, I thought you were so pristine, kind of self-disciplined.”

“I am, I mean, I was... but sometimes we slip up. You must know that. You fall off your bike, you mess up and you get back and you try to live. And I’m trying, I’m really trying.” I try to sob but fail, I am not sorry enough.

“Riding without a helmet is one thing, the breeze in your hair, but you’re riding in the storm, you’re running through a hall of broken mirrors. You’re just sick.”

The sky implodes, I fall through it, through its colours, and I hear his bell, haunting me. Haunting me on the bus home.

: 02 Dec 2009 12:56 |  Tags: Creative Non-Fiction |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem