All The Small Things

She kissed me on the stairs and all I could think of was that I tasted like garlic and onion and meat. Meat. The stairs reminded me of the girl I liked when I was 12. She was my brother's girlfriend though, so I guess that complicated things. I tasted like garlic and onion and meat and she had just kissed me on the stairs. But all I could think of was my brother's girlfriend who I liked when I was 12.

I smelt like flowers and wasn't that strange? Flowers are feminine I guess, but she probably didn't notice that when she kissed me. Because I tasted weird and I was thinking about my brother's girlfriend and she was kissing me and I was going up the stairs and she was going down them.

And all I could think of was how I wished that I tasted sweet when she kissed me and how this wasn't the right time and I'd wished that she'd kiss me again, somewhere else when I tasted as good as I smelt and when I wasn't thinking about my brother's girlfriend and when she wasn't going down the stairs and me going up them.

I'm Only Pretty Sure That I Can't Take Anymore

So you go and live your life, you go and forget about me, go and replace me with someone similar, tell yourself that you are doing the right thing for all of us. You go and do what's good for you, because what's good for me stopped being good a long time ago.

I've had this dulling pain in my stomach for the last seven days and I think it is the pain of losing slowly, it's not sharp and intrusive but it's always there, when I wake up, when I think about you. This dulling pain heightens when I see you, when I think about seeing you, it becomes sharp and intrusive because I realise it is easier to hate you than to love you.

And so that's what I do, I hate instead of love and all the residual feelings of sorrow and loneliness are now replaced by an urgent angst, I am punching the brick wall now instead of crashing into it, slowly, sadly.

So you go and do what's good for you. You go and worry about yourself and don't you worry about me because I've decided to hate. You are going now with the pieces of my life that I handed to you, the pieces I told you to throw away.

So go and live your life and I'll live mine. I'll forget about you and the pain will pass.

You go and climb over those brick walls, and maybe you'll say hi to me as I crash into them, as my fists crash into them, as my heart crashes and my mind takes control.

Go and do what's good for you because I know you will. Forget this mess and just remember that you left a mark on me. So go and live your life, that's what I'm supposed to do right? Now that you are gone, or now that you are going, you did everything I said and now I hate you for it, because this dulling pain won't leave me and neither will my feelings.

I wonder how it's going to be when you don't know me anymore?

It's like you are removing all traces of yourself from my view, from my life. It's like you are scared. It's like you are being overly cautious. It's like you think I'm a danger to you. It's like you are gone.

So you go and live your life, you go and forget about me, go and replace me with someone similar, tell yourself that you are doing the right thing for all of us. And what happens when you do? You say we don't forget, but then what? If we don't forget then are we destined to fall?

In My Mind I Still Need A Place To Go

Clementine is the city that sits in the corner and never begs to be accepted into the middle. It is most fascinating when unoccupied, or when there is just one person, trying to find their way, asking what gives voice to mercy. Is it the stranger who leaves hope behind, because they are finished with it, because they believe you need it more. Because they know you are going home to no one and you are still searching for something to make it all worthwhile. Or is mercy the things you don't say, the words you forget when it means the most.

Visiting Clementine is like looking for hope in the tiny uninflected patch of sky that covers the universe. It is thinking of every city that came before it and realising it's like nothing you've ever seen. It is ignoring the green rolling hills and the tangerine sky and admitting that you are lost. That you've been lost a long time and you've come for forgiveness, you've come to find it in Clementine.

The shaded buildings hide the sun in Clementine. It is dark so you can find your way, not because you have lost it. Leaving Clementine is like sitting on the edge of the world and not caring whether you fall or fly, because there is nothing at the edge, it's all behind you now, back in Clementine where it all began. It is questioning what it all meant, because surely it meant something. It is forgiveness and accepting what's been left for you, because for as long as you can remember it's always felt like nothing.

Clementine is the city that reminds you of the girl you fell in love with, the one you left behind. The girl you've spent the rest of your life looking for.

The Spaces Between

I was so prepared for this to fall gracefully from my mind that I got caught in the space between falling and forgetting. So instead of this falling gracefully, it has stumbled, just like me. Unable to land on anything solid, unable to grasp anything real again.

Living Room

We are all voyeurs. We look into others lives with accidental intention and try to refrain from making comment, from correcting the misplaced apostrophes. Accidental intention cannot be said of my neighbour however.

I believe a neighbour is anyone who noses their way into your life, whether it be, asking what you are cooking for dinner, in the hopes that it might appear on their doorstep, or watching you from their windows with a great deal of intention. To me, a neighbour is not the person who lives in the apartment next door, the unnamed antagonist who keeps me up at night, going insane over their bad taste in music. Think: the circus meets Pavarotti. There is never talking or shuffling footsteps, but always muffled artificiality, seeping through the walls and encasing my bed in stone, in noisy, badly played stone.

But back to my neighbour, the one who has scrawled ‘my windows look into your living room’ in black marker on their window. There may be two footpaths, a four lane road, a thousand cars, several flights of stairs and our whole lives separating us, but this neighbour feels inherently close to me, to my life. They are in the living room of my mind. Always, just waiting, sipping a quiet tea while I’m out back going mad over caffeine. They are just sitting, waiting.

I can’t recall if the writing had been there since I’d moved in, or if it was newly written, and in my own secret pain I’d failed to notice. My neighbour watches as I slip into another narcoleptic state on the couch. I don’t actually own a couch, or the traditional meaning of the word. What I own is chairs, many chairs. Chairs that form in the shape of a couch but never mimic the indulgent comfort. I’d learned to live with this, told myself it was only what I deserved.

My neighbour watches me as I sit on the floor with the blinds flung together, drawn open, knees to my chest, sobbing because I had just let everything go for the second time in my life and it didn’t feel good like it did the first. They watched me as I began to wonder why. The person in the apartment next door did not see this, nor did they hear it. But my neighbour sees everything; they live my life with me through four panes of glass. They watch me sit on the balcony on my vintage bicycle, eyes shut, speeding blindly through the streets, ringing the bell madly and knocking people down like they were empty rubbish bins. They understand why I do this on the balcony and not the street. Because the street is full of terrible people like the person who lives next door, listening to circus opera.

Me and my neighbour, we understand that the city is not brimming with life, full of people surging through its veins. We understand that this is a desert we live in, that it is only as real as we let ourselves believe, and that at any given moment this desert will become imaginary, and we will be separated from one another forever.

So when those words scrawled on the window begin to make me feel uneasy, I just remind myself, this person, this person is my neighbour. My neighbour understands me, understands why I’m alone all the time, why I’ll never leave the house again, and why no one will ever come to my door. My neighbour understands because they wait for me in the living room of my mind, every night, just waiting. Waiting for me.

I Feel Something, It's Better Than Nothing

Whoever said time heals all wounds lied. It's hard to let go of you, to forget, when your words are all that I can remember, I can't stop them making me sad.

I guess I was looking for that immediacy again, that release, but it isn't the same this time. It is slow and painful, it is remembering everything you ever said and trying to tell myself it meant nothing.

Breaking the chain doesn't mean it's not going to happen again. This ugliness will mutate itself into another form and take hold when it feels like it. I don't have control, and that thought makes me sick. Trying to take control of this is a pointless venture into the ocean.

I found this quote in a book I'm reading at the moment 'How easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.' Sometimes things just make sense, they just stick, and that sticks. It's so rare to meet someone who just gets it, and so isn't it natural to do everything you can to hold on to that?

Time doesn't heal all wounds, no. Not at all.