A thousand dead suns burning

And the worst part is waking up alone in a dark room where moments ago you had been before reality set in and the moments turn to years.

‘I don’t believe in love,’ you said, doodling love hearts on the wall behind the schoolyard, ‘it’s just something your parents tell you to justify hitting you.’

And the kids, in their blue and white uniform, their hats and their singsong way of speaking, chased each other in circles around the quadrangle. A tennis ball hit the wall behind me, I pretended I was unfazed, my arms crossed as I leant against it, but my insides raced.

You came to school with blue and black bruises hidden under Ray Ban wayfarers, the next day you stayed home. I rode past your house. You sat out on the porch waiting for me. And when my bell rang, you came strolling down the path with a stick in your hand.

‘Don’t ever fall in love,’ you said. And you cussed at me. ‘Because that’s how people show each other love,’ you explained. And when I handed you the handlebars you took me for a ride down to edge of town.

I gripped your shoulders, as you whistled a made up tune (you claimed your grandpa had taught you) with the wind in our hair. You rode until the town abated, until the moon rose up before us.

And a thousand suns lit the sky ablaze as we looked out into the river, ‘the city looks so beautiful at night.’ And I nodded, but you continued, ‘but the world is never more beautiful than at sunset.’ I disagreed.

There in that moment before the sun takes leave and the moon rises, the world is fragile, as if its very existence hinged on the moon taking its place in the night sky. But what if one night, the moon failed to rise? What if the sun in its haste took the world along with it? And what if I alone remained in the fading world?

There would be no repose, no birds to usher in the dawn, and no stars for us to lie under. But maybe in that void we would not be broken. And we could stand with our toes on the edge of the world. We could skip across galaxies and watch suns set. You would hold my hand as we sat down to watch a million sunsets. There would be no daylight, no twilight, and we would never sleep, separate for a fragment in time.

But we were not alone. There were people, who broke things as if it belonged to them, as if existence entitled them to everything on earth. People who breathed the same air we did and walked under the same sky but were so different from us. So close you could touch them, rub shoulders with them, run your hands along their chest they would notice yet so distant it almost seemed as though we were alone in a planet of six billion people. But worst of all were the people who were so close to us they could see right through our masks. They were the ones who broke us, who pronounced judgment on our heads as we cowered under false pretenses and make believe, whose hands deprived our dreams with oxygen until it hung lifeless from the boughs of dead trees.

I poked a green and purple bruise, the soft skin giving way under my finger. Your hollowed eyes blinked back anger.

‘Does it hurt?’ my voice struggling to escape, the words writhing at the callousness of the question, a careless person asking a widow if they felt any pain.
You nodded in defiance. ‘It only hurts if you think about it.’
And I thought that you were born a liar and lies were not the evil things that people said they were but rather layers that cushioned us.
And you cupped my face with your hands. ‘If you purge yourself of hope you die.’

And it wasn’t until years later, as we stood at the precipice of age I realized you were long dead. The slow decay of what spirit you had left as you made your way through the mortal flesh of fickle whims and fake names, of purged connections and purple fairies prancing across pink seas. And we would speak of it only when the time had come for me to confess the fear that one night you would not come home.

A cigarette laced with herbs to remedy your crooked back, created smoke circles between your appeasing words, long overused and the dull thudding of frustrations knocking at the door.
‘I’m okay’, no longer seemed sufficient. And, ‘what do you want from me?’ became too difficult to answer.
‘I’m leaving you,’ no longer preceded the denouement but rather your head against my stomach, stifling an, ‘I love you,’ I had promised not to utter.
‘I told you not to love me,’ you growled, a fitting sound for a stray without a master. ‘Who would love trash?’
‘You’re not trash.’
One hand clutched at matted hair, the pungent stench of bar room floors and days old whiskey that clung to your tattered clothes or the sickly chocolate smell that peppered your breath, when was the last time you had a wash? ‘Look at me!’ Fingernails dug into my chin. ‘How could you love me?’
My head met the wall, and just as quickly, your eyes fell, was it a memory or a realization that stayed your hand?
‘You loved me first.’
‘Leave your keys on the table,’ came your muted reply. And you curled up on the couch like a child resigned, with neither victory nor defeat.

Words were not needed. And dreams were tessellated. Your hands grasped for flesh as you crawled into the bed that had become too big. And we danced our final waltz, the curtains closing to the muted applause of an audience that had begun to leave.

 

It was the moment a smirk briefly broke his stoic face. For a single moment as their equally dark eyes met, she felt the restlessness take hold of her. She ran away from him, her legs shaking unsure they could

withstand the force of that smile. She waved at him as meek as a child on their first day of school, surrounded by people who were supposed to be her friends but who faded into the edges as he approached her with a

drink.

“It’s because I’m stupid,” he said when in reality it was because no one else had been sharper. When in reality he rendered her speechless lest she say something stupid. She averted his gaze, repelled by the sheer force of how much he knew. But there was something. Something about him that made it difficult to tear her eyes away. His facetious commentary of a child falling over, the mock vitriol in telling her he was a disgusting human being for not knowing that salmon came from dolphins. And the way he sheltered her from the wind as they walked through the city with the distance between them.

He told her about the cyanide in her apple seeds. It was the way he hid his smile within tired eyes. It was caught within the gravel in his voice as he told her about the sunlight refracting through raindrops in the sky. Did he know that she imagined them walking hand in hand through the rain? “Let’s be Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo walking arm in arm through a black and white urban street.” And his face broke into a quiet laugh. “I don’t know who that is.” The folds of his mouth as he tells her to, “calm down.”

 

It was the way he worked so hard just for that first kiss when their lips, unaccustomed to the other glided awkwardly until they met. She leaned across his chest. Her eyes closed. Her hands running through his curly hair. She loved his curly hair, the way they seemed to say, “See I am human I have hair but I am different, that’s why they’re curly.” The way he held her legs between his, protective and nurturing all at once.

In the summer, he took her fishing. And she failed to catch a single fish. He laughed at her ineptitude but she grew more attached. Surprised at the honesty in him. It was in the way he wrapped his jacket around her when the winter came and the way his eyes darted nervously when she smiled at him. But mostly it was the way he understood that Ferris wheels mean true love.

How did we get here?

An oak tree grows next to my house
We relax in the shade beneath the branches
My contribution consists of alcohol
I dream of a number between one and ten
Did someone call for my keys?
The rabbit burrowed underneath the blanket
Do you have any Mexicans in your apples?
There’s no time for squirrels in the park
He likes to bloom in the afternoon
This is the man whose name I have forgotten
He lives in the house with the Christmas Decorations
The old lady who lives next door is a teacher
She has a goat that eats red dresses
Dessert is all that he wants
The police usually read tea leaves
He had a lot of ideas most of which were impractical
They have two sons who are doctors
And one who is an architect
The house that Jack built is large
It took him awhile to get used to people who eat popcorn during the movie
He was just quoting Bukowski when he left in the morning
A sticky verbiage of gluttony superseded by her vanity
And alliterations mean no more to him than consonants
He’s a baby in the purest sense of the word
He’s a princess without a carriage
And we’re sleeping on his side of the bed
He’s sleeping with his eye on the ceiling fan

Sleeping Pills

“It’s all done” he says, his clean hands stuffed into the pockets of his sterile white coat. “You should feel a slight discomfort in the next few days. Take two tablets a day with a meal and you should feel fine.”

 

They have pills for everything now; depression, impotence, acne, pain, heartache. But where are the pills to erase the guilt. I found it right next to a bottle of swirling brown spirit.

But the walls close in on me. It’s hard to breathe. Black spots float on the surface of my eyeballs. It jets to the left. To the right. Always following my sight.

The water bottle feels warm against my belly. I rub it, wanting there to be something left. It’s still round. Maybe I dreamt it? Maybe I didn’t go to the clinic? Maybe I don’t feel guilty? I’m just depressed. Have a pill.

I roll to my side, running my hands across the pillow. “It doesn’t smell like him at all,” I tell Alice. She looks at me in the same way, with the same sleepy eyes. “You don’t smell like him” I tell her.

I was in George Street one day when your scent walked past me. It caught me like a hand to my chin and pulled me along with it, down the street to an old bakery that you once frequented. But it wasn’t you. It belonged to an old man with grey espadrilles. He smiled at me as I stood in front of him, disoriented by the smells of sourdough, of croissants, of your shirt on my bed.

I pushed Alice off your pillow. It’s still your pillow. Even if you never lay your head on it. I had plans for you. You would visit me on your days off. You’d lie in bed watching me change into my work clothes.

“Do you have to go to work?” you’d whine.

I’d laugh as I button up my blue shirt. The one we bought together from Zara. Remember you looked at it? “It looks like my work shirt” you said.  “I know” I giggled.

I was at the train station on Platform 3 when I caught my own reflection, in the blue shirt, untucked, rolled sleeves and loose black trousers. It reminded me of you. On our first date.

“And just in case you didn’t know, you’r

e not a bad guy.” I told you before I got on the train.

But that won’t happen now will it? You’ll

never kiss me on the forehead again. And tell me that you need me. Or tell me that I’m too excitable. I’ll never ruffle your hair. You hated it, I know. But you never realised that I never loved you more than when you were just you.

When you asked me what I wanted from you, I told you that I wanted all of you.

I cringe thinking about it. Did I really say that? It’s so cheesy. I probably stole it from a movie. But that’s what we were doing, wasn’t it? Make believing we were in a movie. You tell me I have beautiful eyes even when you can’t see them. And when people ask me if I love you I tell them I don’t know. Because there’s something tragic about not knowing. That’s what you are to me. You’re history’s tragic hero.

I got rid of it. I don’t want people to tell me how much it reminds them of you. I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl. It wasn’t old enough to be anyone, it was just some thing. I didn’t want it. It didn’t seem fair that it should live when you couldn’t. So I saw someone. An

d afterwards they gave me pills. Like when you went to get your shots as a child and the doctor gave you a lollipop. They don’t do that now by the way. They give the kids stickers instead. It’s not quite the same.

But Alice keeps looking at me with her sleepy eyes.

“He left you a gift” she says.

“I don’t want presents,” I whisper, “I want him.”

I would cry but I took the pill for that. So I sleep because I took the pill for that.

The Only Weather I've Got My Mind On

Snowboarding at Verbier, Les 4 Vallees, Switzerland

A bright endless summer sky, as blue as the deepest blue with light the colour of fire and the thickest layer of white powder you can roll your snowboard over like a rolling pin to dough.

I collect

Alice. A Look into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2009)

Alice's adventures in Wonderland books in different editions and the accompanying merchandise.

Love and Biology

He stabbed her in the heart. Just when he thought she could let it all go. He called her out to coffee on a Sunday. He commented on how she looked well. And he made small talk about his new job. His new apartment. His mother. Her mother. She sat patiently. Smiling. Laughing at his jokes. ‘You’ve got talent and you know you can’t be bought,’ he said, and hoped that she wouldn’t realize he stole it from someone. ‘Thanks,’ she said. She reached out for his hands tapping the table. He made to grab the sugar, stirring as he sprinkled sugar into the coffee. A look crossed her face, brief but enough to alert him that she was aware something wasn’t right. ‘I got a call this morning,’ he began. She squinted. Concentrating so hard on his words as he broke the news. Her face exploded first into confusion then unadulterated rage. If she were smarter or angrier she would have thrown coffee at his face. ‘There’s no next time in love Mick.’ She stormed off to the counter and paid before marching out of the café. Seconds later she came back. ‘I’m sorry. I just had a bad day.’ He grabbed her hands. ‘No I shouldn’t have left it to the last minute, I’m sorry.’ She smiled at him. Her eyes misting from the pain. He felt worse as she sobbed uncontrollably. Her make up running down her cheeks. And neck. And staining her new blouse. He reached over but rage had once again taken over. It gripped her like a crazy psychotic little rabbit. She swore to do things that he hoped wasn’t possible. She wailed and cried out to the god above. ‘Why did it have to be you?’ she moaned. ‘I could have gone out with anyone but I chose you.’ He tried hard not to notice the clear slime that covered her lips. Or the fact that her tears had well and truly washed her face with black mascara. Her hair had escaped their boundaries and he made to wipe the hair from her face but she growled at him. There was nothing he could do but accept that it was his fault. How long had she asked him to get her that bag? How long had he put off getting it in favour of fishing or a day out with the boys or facebooking or watching videos that were much more interesting that browsing through shopping sites looking for the one thing that she always wanted? ‘I think we should break up,’ she said through the tears. And she left. He sat in the booth for a while. He really should have stopped her. And given her the box. After all he went through the trouble of it direct from the Hermes store. ‘I can’t believe you made her cry over a joke,’ Gavin handed him a beer. ‘So that’s it? You’re really broken up?’ He nodded without taking his lips off the bottle. ‘You’ve said this before man. How do I know you’re telling the truth?’ He didn’t reply. He couldn’t bear to tell anyone that he had broken up with her all because she licked the slime off her lips.

And he dreamt

It became a game to him. Harry Alwill had always wondered what it would be like to turn a girl inside out. To see her insides on the outside. It wasn’t that he derived some pleasure from it. Or he was possessed of evil intentions. He was in the simplest sense of the word – curious. In dark rooms, in dark alleys, in dark streets. If something was devoid of light, Harry had been there.

Millie, a girl he trapped in limerence when she was eighteen was the first. She offered herself completely. Her minds, her body, the little caverns of her sanctity were offered for a purpose higher than herself. He started with little cuts.
‘I’m not doing this because I hate women,’ he expounded to her limp body, ‘ in fact I love everything about you.’
Her mother wept on Harry’s shoulders. ‘Who would do this to her?’ She wailed.
And there hidden in the folds of his lips were the words that she wouldn’t have believed, that the very man she clung to and had hoped Millie would someday wed was the very man who carved the sins of his mind into her skin.
Millie’s mother slept in his arms that very night. And he pushed himself inside her as if he were a newborn suddenly frightened by the bright lights wanting to go back to that cold place without noise or stimuli. And her voice reached the heavens, oh the woman was a wailer, puncturing his skin with her nails. And he pushed himself harder and faster and stronger until he exploded from the pin pricks of her touch.

In winter, when the light left quickly, scurrying along with its skirt in hand. He trudged across the snow with his scarf wrapped tight around his mouth when he ran into a blue eyed dragon named Amelia. She was his last quarry. The red haired daughter of some socialite with a gentle voice and the left hook of a boxer. She was young, and teased the insides of his viscera, keeping him awake at night and left him dreaming in the morning.
‘I love you best,’ he whispered one night. And she rolled onto his chest, rubbing her face on his neck.
‘You’re going to break my heart,’ she said. ‘Whoever loves you most hurts you most.’
And he made no reassurances. He loved her truly and wholly and wanted nothing more than to own her for all his life. He wanted words to be enough. That somehow everything would work out if he just said he loved her. But inside him, curdled the desire to capture the essence of her fragrance, to taste the weight of her words on his tongue and to hold her breath in his mind forever. He wanted; as he navigated the path to her heart, to find the truth behind her love. Her heart sat on his blood soaked hands, beating slower and fainter as the minutes passed until all he had left was a hardened organ. She never doubted that he loved her. She kept her composure even as he ripped her thighs open. Her sobs remained inside of her stifling the fear he felt on her shaking hands. Tears welled up in her eyes. Their gleam never faded in the glass jars he kept them. Holding him in a trance even as he laid beside Valentina at night.

She was not different to any girl. She was plain with dark hair that sat like a broom on her head. ‘You have big hair,’ he said. ‘You have curly hair,’ she replied. She was also; it seemed to him, plain of intellect. Slow to reply. Quick to anger. A creature of base emotions stricken with an incurable case of binary.
‘James,’ he sat down next to her, ‘likes you.’
‘He’s ugly,’ she said.
He swallowed his beer with difficulty. ‘He’s not Brad Pitt, but…’
‘If he’s not good looking then he’s ugly,’ was what she said when she rose from her seat and walked away from him.
The simplicity of her answer caught him. And he felt a desire to own her that surpassed all others.

‘I love you,’ he said as she rolled off him.
She slid to her side of the bed. ‘I love you too,’ she mumbled. Her breath slowed soon after.
His mind raced at the sight of her back, so tanned, so smooth, damp from sweat. He ran a finger across the length of her spine. She didn’t flinch as he bit her arm. A thought crossed his mind that she could change him. That he had found her adequate. He toyed with the idea rolling it around in his tongue. His eyes struggled to stay open. His sleeping mind perceived her as she rolled over and smiled at him. He had seen that grin in the devilish Amelia. Moments before the desire to cut her took over him. Valentina asked him a question he couldn’t hear. His body felt numb, paralyzed by his heavy limbs. He was drowsy, he whispered. She swept the hair from his eyes. She bent over to kiss his forehead.
Did she say goodnight? Or was it goodbye?
She rose from the bed, illuminated by the outside lights.
Go to sleep, she ordered.

And she

of one goodbye and forty sunsets

Just let me be
I don’t want to be reminded
That you’ll never love me too
Strip off all thoughts of you
Throw away every moment
Row my boat away from you
I don’t need another friend

Stop pulling me, my strings are broken
You’ve plucked out all my chords
You’ve left me out of tune
Stop pulling me I want to be forgotten
You’ve picked at all my stitches
You’ve left me out undone

I can’t walk down the street alone
I can’t close my eyes at night
I can’t sing a single song
That you haven’t occupied.
You’re the villain
And the hero
In every story I read
I’m doing what I promised
Living out the world
Before you do
So why have I lost?

Goodbye to good intentions
Farewell to blunt ambitions
I’m waiting out every sunset
Turn my back on your horizon

Waves still meet the shore
But you never stand alone
Clawing at the sand for
Someone to save you
While you’re standing in
The crashing foam

White jackets and padded walls
Breaking out from dreams of you
I woke up and found you sleeping
I should have left you then

Just let me be
I feel stupid for believing you
I wish I could tear you down
Knock you off your perch
Instead I run away

Goodbye to wounded pride
Hello to brand new lies

The Dying Art of Sleeping

Some dance to remember . . .

There’s a boy. He can’t sleep so he reads. He reads the way her wilted body drapes over the antique wooden chair, her statuesque legs spread loosely to reveal skin. She is the force of a storm on a balmy autumn evening, when a fine layer of smog glides over the heavier rain clouds and a gentle wind lifts the pages of the open book on his lap. The muffled roar of the rolling thunder follows a dim flash of lightning. A light shines in the distance. A fleeting moment of brightness in her memory, gleaming from the world outside her window. An isolated focal point in a sea of white fog.

He reads the fall and rise of her exposed chest. He reads the way the seamless silk robe slips down her right shoulder, concealing as much as it reveals. The shadows under her collarbone, the sharp contrast of her chocolate coloured skin against the clean white of the crisp linen sheet, the hairs on her awkward limbs, betrays her imperfections and she suddenly loses appeal. Her breath escapes her chapped lips. . .

There’s a boy. His smell lingers on the pillow. The moonlight filters through the lace curtain and caresses her skin as her body lies on the cold empty bed. He’s sitting on the windowsill with his black velvet eyes trained on her and at the sleeping world below as he stares out into the still, dark lake. The water catches the moonlight in its inky blackness, casting a faint beam onto his fading smile. He can’t sleep so he reads aloud to her, ignoring her inattentiveness.

“You should go,” she exhales. Imagined tears trace the curve of her cheeks only to disappear into the pillow. He closes the book on his lap, lowers his spectacles and chuckles. He laughs but he doesn’t stop reading. He reads the dancing moonlight on her open flesh, catching the light in his spectacles. She’s not hurt enough, he reasons as he lowers himself into the bed.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” he whispers, as if dropping his voice made the words any less heavy.

She flinches as his cold fingers sweep the ridges of her bare back, tracing the shallow valley of her spine. A landscape without end.  His head rests on hers and a grunt escapes her. “You’re heavy,” she says. Her palm finds his chest. His fingertips reach her belly.

“I want you to be happy,” he buries his face into her neck, “but we’re walking different paths. I still have so much to do and I don’t want to drag you along.” He recites a script. She wonders how long it took for him to rehearse this speech. Thesis, antithesis, hypothesis. All they were to her were the machinations of a scared little boy.

She shuts her eyes. “It’s better if we just break up,” she lies. Flicking the blanket over her body, she turns away from him, her hands in fists and his guilt abates.

There was a boy.
He was carried away on a crest of a wave.
When the moon was high and the sky was clear,
He sang a lullaby she couldn’t bear.
At the stroke of midnight, he gazed at the stars
But in one stroke of midnight he fell too far.
There was a boy.
He never knew love and now that he’s ready, he’s a victim, to the tide.

There’s a boy. He can’t sleep so he reads. He reads the fading imprint of her body on his bed. He reads the letter she left under his pillow. He is merely wounded but the bleeding soul wails in the night, even in sleep. He has no refuge from her shrieks, her laughter, her tears, her screams of agony, the dying fall of her final melody. She is his only in eternal sleep.

. . . some dance to forget.