Tell me baby, that it’ll be alright,

That I’ll be wrapped up in your arms tonight

Wipe away my tears, would you?

Kiss them maybe? I’d love that too.

Wrap my face up in your hands,

whisper, softly, what you’ve planned.

 

Tell me lies about how you’ll stay

even when it gets too hard today.

I fall asleep with the music on these days. The soft melodies attempt to chase away the loneliness that creeps into bed instead of you. The steady drum beat – 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 replaces the emptiness where another heartbeat should be. I can’t sleep with silence.

I told you I’m not wounded. I wasn’t lying, in a way. There existed a gap inside that you filled and now it’s empty again.

When the music rocks me to sleep, I dream a romance I’m not sure exists or ever will.

Bodies like waves
Satin clings:
Electric arcs between skin,
Static lightning in the dark,
Highlighting collar bones;
And hips;
And navel

Dry lips on glistening breast
Fingertips kissed
One by one
Softness in urgency
Only in dreams
Always in dreams

I’ll be dreaming now
Don’t wake me

Look, I love you kid. You don’t think it’s possible but it’s true.

You think you’re broken beyond repair don’t you? I know you look at the scars on your thighs, your wrists, your arms and know they aren’t going anywhere. On show for everyone to make of them what they will. What about this then?

Here, let me kiss them. Let me cover you in gold leaf; press the crinkles into those wrinkles and into those scars. All your lines covered in sparkling dust. You’ll glimmer where you’ve aged the most, where you’ve broken open and been put back together.

Just like the Japanese do with Kintsukuroi, I’ll wrap those cracks, not to hide them but to console them. To warm them. To embellish. It’ll be an aspect of your history then, how you came to be part gold.

Would you be as precious without these flaws filled with gold? Of course, the preciousness exists already and the gold only highlights for you to better see. Look around you, kid. These people have cracks that you can’t see. If only gold filled them up too. Would you ask about them if they were?

You’re an adventure, kid. Don’t you love adventure? I do. I’ve always loved adventure. People seek out adventure. It makes them feel alive.

 

I was about 13 at the time I think. My older sister bundled my younger sister and I up into the car I would later buy from her and drove us to the pub down the road where we planned to collect her then-boyfriend, now-husband.

She pulled up at the front of the entrance door where a few men stood smoking and talking together. One of the men approached the car, seeing a group of young girls smiling and jovial and he mouthed some words to us we couldn’t decipher from behind the closed windows.

I smiled at him, warily, and looked back at my sister who was busying herself with a text message to let her boyfriend know she’d arrived. When she noticed the man approach the car, reaching his hand to open the car door where I sat, she hastily locked the doors with the central locking button between us. Her eyes were wide and her word spat out angrily: “No” to the man who backed away with his hands in the air, the smile still on his face. It was so funny to him that he was seen as a threat. But she knew. She knew what anger and damage a man could do to her or me. She knew then and I am sad that I didn’t know about her hurt already.

Her daughter, now, years after this memory, might not realise the same thing when she cries out “Daddy! Leave mummy alone!”. She doesn’t know what ripped pyjamas mean or what bruises represent underneath the skin. It takes a few more years, clearly.

We’re just having a little conversation to fill the space between us. It is small talk to begin with – meant to open a dialogue about bigger things after greeting.

You describe to me the apartment you live in, leaving out no detail. I walk with your words as you speak them. A hand brushes against each wooden surface, near the door, the paneling of the frame, over the books that don’t gather dust despite their quantity. You must read them often. I don’t linger on their titles because you don’t.

You mention the doorway into the living room, open plan, a window casting light onto the almost empty coffee table in the middle. One magazine sits there: Dumbo Feather. A sculpture, too. The sun light in the roof beats down onto the sculpture and lights it perfectly as if you had curated an exhibition of minimalist art.

I take my shoes off at the door – I assume this is a bare foot household. I don’t know why I assume that. I flex my toes on your wooden floor, put the weight of my body onto the soles. No carpets yet warm to the touch. It is cosy in this place; perfectly sized for one person to feel safe. I imagine myself sharing it with you. Being invited into your retreat. Sometimes too small. Sometimes frostiness between us because of the walls. Mostly perfect for intimacy. Curled up into each other on the couch that feels like a cloud.

You move to the kitchen and so I follow. It is small, clean. Tidy. I move my eyes to the sink above which you explain a glass vase holds some flowers. I don’t know what type of flower and you do not elaborate. Light green tiles frame a bay window. Gas, not electric. Best for cooking you tell me.

Outside the window you make the best of a bad situation: hanging plants on the tattered brick wall that separates your neighbour’s home from yours. There is no backyard to speak of. The kitchen bench is cool and continues the green theming. No clutter anywhere. I wonder if you have any, anywhere. In your house or in your life. The fridge is bare stainless steel, no magnets, no bills to pay.

The bathroom next – small again, but perfectly practical, like an IKEA wet dream. Everything stored, upright, packed away. Despite that, your home doesn’t seem unlived in. It seems inviting. Packaged and waiting. It seems right. 

Your bedroom, upstairs, is a loft. The ceiling is low and sloped towards the window at the head of your bed. The stair case that leads there is wooden and springy. It creaks on the third step. I imagine a romantic path up those stairs. Falling over each other and laughing into our shoulders. Stopping to kiss when gravity shows which step is most comfortable.

The warmest part of the house is the loft bedroom, you say. The morning sun comes through that circle window above two pillows and a quilt. I can’t help but imagine your naked body sprawled across that bed with the sun on your back. You are olive skinned and your hair is shinier than I ever thought possible in that sunlight. It sounds like some sort of adult version of Play School but I don’t mention that. I ask if it gets too warm in summer and whether that’s unbearable: do you sleep downstairs?

You tell me that that’s when you stay at your girlfriend’s house. She has an air conditioner. You joke that your house is lived in for three seasons of the year and hers the fourth. She’s got a big place with four housemates. Her house is full of instruments and photos and artworks and laughter and noise and they wear shoes inside. They have two cats.

I’m confused by the stark contrast of two opposing aesthetics. I ask how you manage to move from ordered, loft living to a shared household like the one described. You tell me it’s not about the house or the aesthetics. You tell me it’s about who’s in the space; the company. I concede. No-one would seriously fall in love with a house.

I went for a solo-cycle the other day, by the river, in the sun. I really enjoy being alone, in the moment with nothing to answer to but my own thoughts. The sun was glorious and the wind was fresh against my skin.

I smiled, a contented smile and revelled in how I was doing exactly what I wanted at the exact moment I wanted it. The frustrations of the week; memories of the anxiety of forced interaction with others were passing me as I cycled on, gradually picking up pace but never feeling stressed.

I was interrupted by splashing in the river and turned my face towards it, thinking perhaps some idiot were swimming. Although it was beautiful, I could not imagine swimming in that river. Where I looked, there were ripples in the glassy surface and then a fin! I stopped my bike and stared in wonder at the Dolphin breaching the water every few seconds.

I squealed with delight “HA!” and looked around me hurriedly for someone to share the moment with. I wanted to say “A dolphin! Look! A dolphin right there! Look how amazing it is!”, but there was noone around me. I was disappointed then, that I was alone.

It passed me quickly and reappeared metres further away until it was unable to be seen by my failing eyesight. I looked after it for a long time, hoping that someone would notice it down the path in front of me and react in the same way. I hoped that I would see the same reaction in someone else – that I could connect on some level to another person right then.

I had that moment entirely to myself and ironically, I realised I didn’t want it be my own.

There’s something inside me
A part that is broken
Shattered or loose
Brittle, broken, splintered

It’s a grenade; a weapon
Tumbling about between my bones
No master and no purpose
But to obliterate

You can’t see from the outside
There’s no hunch, no blood
But it’s there, I swear
One day it’ll be too much
Not for me; but for you

I need it removed; extracted;
like a diseased bone, or a rotten tooth
A procedure enacted
The act of subtraction
To result in a whole

“What are you doing for your birthday tonight? A party? I didn’t get an invitation” she asks, teasing, sipping her soy mocha and clearly burning her mouth in the process.

“I don’t do parties”. I say. I’m stiff lipped and blank eyed and there’s an awkward silence. I place a piece of bacon on my toast and lift it to my mouth. There’ll be no elaboration on that subject and she takes the hint. We talk about our studies instead. She forgets about the temperature of her HOT HOT HOT drink and burns her mouth a total of four more times. Ladies and Gentleman: Stephanie, the PhD. candidate.

She’s a new friend, who I’ve met at University, so I forgive that she doesn’t know I’ve not hosted a party since I was 14. She’s also blonde, so I forgive that she doesn’t know that hot hurts.

Maybe at some point I’ll tell her about the last party. We’ve become quite close over the last two years but there’s still a bit of shame attached to the birthday story and I’m not sure I trust her not to judge me yet.

I think most of the time you can pinpoint the origin of an insecurity down to one event. In this instance, my brother was turning 11 and I was just mortified by the idea of spending an afternoon with his smelly, annoying friends. I thought I was a good sister though, so I only complained a little. Just a little.

My brother had luckily invited my friend Melissa, who we both knew from after school care. I knew Melissa wasn’t likely to come though. There were other parties on that same day and my brother wasn’t exactly Danny from Grease. I knew his party would be second choice, maybe third or fourth. Maybe not on the choice list at all.

It turned out that Melissa wasn’t going to come. Over a series of weeks, I begged her. I bribed her. She finally agreed and a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t think about my brother at all – I just wanted to make sure there was someone there for me to hang out with.

Melissa arrived at the official start time and we played “Pin the tail on the donkey” and “What’s the time Mister Wolf” with my parents and brother. No-one else came. She left at the advertised finish time and we tipped all but a few of the perfect lolly bags into the bin. We pulled the streamers down and it didn’t take long for the house to look like a party hadn’t even occurred there.

Every year my brother’s birthday passes with the obligatory Facebook messages and phone calls just as mine does. There are no streamers and no lolly bags. I’ve never told him that I begged Melissa to come. I never will. That’s what I’m most ashamed of – thinking only of myself and not taking the time to consider how he might feel if no-one came. I hate the thought that he might discover that Melissa only came because she was begged to. Would be be mad at me or just crushed?

“Do you want to hang out on your birthday at least? You can’t just let it pass without celebrating.” Stephanie interrupts the memory. Her coffee is cold now.

I think for a while. It has been 16 years. Maybe that’s long enough. Maybe I don’t have to punish myself anymore.

“Yeah. OK.” I say. “Let’s do dinner. Do you think anyone will be able to come at such late notice?”

I am dust.

Dust that touches you, late in the lonely night, covers you, rests on your shoulders, tangled in your hair.

Dust that you breathe in, deep and long, without realising it is there.

Dust that sits on your lashes like powder and lines down your throat.

One day you will shake me, I’ll wither and float away and wear thin on your skin. Or perhaps her breath on your hair will disturb me and I’ll be gone.

If only I knew how to hold on.

.

He’s respectful and kind

and when I’m grumpy, he doesn’t seem to mind.

He’s funny and smart

and he has listening, down to an art.

He holds me when I cry –

it seems he doesn’t have to try

to be the most caring man

and my biggest fan.

There’s only one thing missing

He’s not who I want to be kissing

If not him, then who?

He’s just not you.