In Altered State

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I write my name
To remind myself
Of who I am

I don’t know myself anymore

I don’t know who you are either

I am emerging
From a hibernation
A slow unravelling
 
Without a fixed sense of self
 
All around me is grief
But I can’t see it or feel it
Each foot is placed
 
One in front of the other
 
As if I am walking
But there is uncertainty
I want to feel joy
 
Yet happiness eludes me
 
Eludes us all.
We talk through
Thinly painted smiles
 
There is no bridge
 
The road we have travelled
 
Miles and miles
From the safety of our couch
We are not where we were
 
We are not sure who we are
 
We take faltering steps
Forward, backward
Forward again
 
And then we lurch to the side
 
We wobble and waive
I watch my words
I won’t use normal again
 
We lived through a night
 
As dark as ever known
We sat here quietly
In a place we call home
 
Nothing happened to us
 
Nothing tangible happened to us
 
There was no crisis or fate
Yet when we left here
We were all in altered state

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Faces in the darkness

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I try and make out

Faces in the darkness

The ones we’ve lost

They haunt my sleep

But they aren’t there

I toss, I turn

There is no peace

We struggle on

Beneath the creep

Of slow guilt

Of relentless pain

Of all those we lost

For no reason we can easily explain

I drift through the house

Worried about flour and soap

There’s a world out there

Where there’s little hope

I can’t seem to grasp

The enormity

Of a world that shut down

In a kind of uniformity

We are one together

Yet hopelessly divided

Fed and unfed

Those home schooled

and those denied it

I must be contributing

In ways I don’t know

To this division of lock down

Into those who have

And those who have no

I sit in the bath

Crying fake tears

Because the ones that I love

Are safe and held dear

What do I know of the grief and the pain

I sat here through lockdown

Slightly worse when it rained

I look into the darkness

In the dead of night

Try to make out there faces

Understand their plight

But it eludes me and

Shames me

It stands just out of sight

I am very lucky

But it does not sit right

 

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Porcelain: growing up a girl

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

And my fingers turn to glass
As they lay flat on my belly
I feel them cold and unmoving
The rest of me begins to colour and shade
If only I could move my fingers
I could smooth out the lumps and the bumps
As the rest of me fades to porcelain
I will not be the elegant ducks on the wall
But the gaudy fish everyone laughs at
I feel my body harden, lose its softness
To become brittle.
People will see me this way forever
My fingers are glass
Sweet smooth crystal
They cannot move
And the transformation goes on
The cracks and crevices become set in place
I will not be the slim elegant dancer
But the dumpy smiley milkmaid
If only I had my delicate hands to smooth it out
I could push it all down to my ankles to form a base
But my hands, resolute, glass on my belly
And I am stuck
In the back row
In the cheap seats
With the other discount ornaments
Grubby hands pick me up and put me down
Dust leeches into my grooves and edges
Not the elevated heights of beauty for me
Not the high mantel piece in the glass cabinet
Grubby hands, they pick me up.
They put me down
I teeter, I totter, I wobble, I fall
I break.
A thousand pieces of me
Spread out across the floor
I am a splinter on lino
Embedded in the flesh of a foot
Blood warms me
Fingers pluck at me
Discard me, the pieces of me
The broom brushes over me
Collects me
Disassembled
Bins me
As if I wasn’t at all

Everyday

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The same woman is in the coffee shop

Everyday

I am in the coffee shop

Everyday

Our lives intersect
but we never meet
We are in a permanent state of never meeting
She looks at me, I look at her
Life plays out around us

Everyday

Take that couple
Who are not a couple
He is talking at her
I note the wedding band
His not hers
She talks work
He talks innuendo

Sometimes its the same words just different voices

Everyday

He is dispensing advice
Like an advice dispenser
About egos
I think he knows about egos
He leans forward, leans back

Which looks best

He is wearing a brown jumper
That never looks good
He blends in with the coffee
She is not getting the vibe
He is being nonchalant
Judging his chances

He takes a misstep

Notices someone else
But she saw
She wasn’t here for that anyway
The world keeps turning

Another one of us comes in

There are 3 of us now,
Another middle aged woman
Clutching a coffee
Sitting alone

Observing life

It is no longer a cool place
The vibe is dying
Literally
It is full of women who dye their hair
And not because they want to
Pale skin and garish lipsticks
They cling to a the ship of youth

But it’s sailed.

He looks around now
Realises his error
He should have taken her
Somewhere the sisterhood
Wasn’t manifest

This place is too lowbrow
The whole thing has cost him £6
For no return
He scowls into his coffee

The coffee does not react

We sit there like guardians
She talks on as if nothing has happened

Nothing has happened

Our coffees have gotten colder
He asks if she knows what he means
She is not a mind reader
I have heard the whole thing
Its not hard to know what he means
She deliberately avoids knowing what he means

Over average luke warm coffee

Six pounds, 35 minutes he won’t get back

The woman who is here everyday
We make eye contact
We have seen this before
We see this all the time

We see this

Everyday.

A stash of words

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

And I collect up the words
And put them in a stack
I stick them in the wardrobe
Right at the back

Words I have no use for
No place said out loud
I won’t be using them
Not even in a crowd

Words like ‘averment’
Ones I refuse to write
I’ve put them in the wardrobe
They are out of sight

I can’t tell you what they are
You can never know
I have made them disappear
I have made it so

And now when
There are things I need to say
I will have fewer words
Because I put some away

Now I will be concise
Brief and to the point
You can be all wordy
But I will not be drawn

I will say it shortly
I will say it short
My words will all have meaning
A sprint and not a walk

I think that I have said it
What I want to say
I have put them in a box
I won’t let them play

And yet I keep on writing
8 stanzas in the end
I thought that if I hid them
My writing might amend

But my pen just keeps on working
Like each sentence adds a thought
I can’t seem to stop
Even though I know I ought

I have had an idea now
I know what to do
I will burn the pen
And my notebook too.

A passage of judgement

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

And the sky went pink, vivid pink
Like all the bubble gum I had ever eaten
Had somehow come out
And been spun into clouds.

I stayed in bed

An unnamed woman,
She came into my room
She sat on my bed
I saw the indent where she sat

But I couldn’t see her at all

I felt her weight as she sat down
I felt the bed move
I turned over
Pulled the covers over my head

I tried to pretend she wasn’t there

I thought it would be easy
Because I couldn’t see her
But I could feel the weight on the bed
I knew she was there

I could feel the bed move with every breath she took

She didn’t say anything
She just sat there
She was judging me
I could feel the weight of her judgement

As heavy as the weight of her body

On my bed
I looked out from under the covers
The sky was still pink, vivid pink
I wished I’d closed my curtains

It was the middle of the day

I had nothing to say
No defence to offer
And she was just sat there
Waiting, like a cat for a mouse

I stayed facing the other way

And I couldn’t see her
But I know she was there
Judging me
I hid under the blankets

Waiting for the weight to be gone

But she was there
And so was I
I pretended to sleep
Then slept

And when I woke in the morning

The sky was blue
And I was sentenced
Without a word said in my favour
I breathed out

I did not inhale again.

Every word I’ve ever known

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I have cut my nails
I have pulled out all my hair
Slashed the bottoms of my feet
And let them bleed on the stair

You have to look it in the eye
You cannot back away
You have to look straight at it
Say what you have to say

I pricked the end of every finger
And every single toe
I climbed into the bath
I am letting it all go

There’s no other way to get it
You can’t let yourself obscure
You’ve got to know you’ve got this
Rather than half sure

I looked at bloodied water
And out loud, I said my name
And then I simply began
Because I will never be the same

You cannot hold back
Give it half of what you’ve got
You’ve got to give it everything
If you want the lot

I just said them all
Every word I’ve ever known
And when I was finally finished
I was finally alone

I rounded them, caressed them
I let those words go free
Sent them out into the world
No longer part of me

Then I closed my lips quite tightly
I let my tongue finally rest
I am wholly ready now
I am at my best

I go back out into the world
Scarred yet fully formed
And I live my life

In silence.

In total silence.

And in my silence,

I will deafen you.

The ‘Me’ Muscle

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I spread wide
And then I contract
Like a muscle

I release
Then hold back

I command the room
I take up all the space
I expand

Next day
I cannot find my place

I ebb and I flow
Then I flow and I ebb
I hide behind the sofa

I sleep
Under the bed

None it makes any sense
None of it feels really me
I’m never really sure

What you get
Is never what I see

I hear my own voice
I hear the words I say
I say them out loud

In my head
The voices never go away

I am not completely sure
If I am ever really me
Is there someone

Somewhere else
And I’m just pretending who I’ll be

Dawning in Essex

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I saw trees
Spiked against a grey sky
In the distance
A horizon flat and even

I took in great gulps of air
And tried to belong
Under a muddy, grubby sky
In the glimpse of a full moon

I stood at a station
And told myself I could do this
When every moment was a struggle
I still went on

I gripped the greyness in my fist
And pulled it around me as I slept
I took that even line, and wore it
As a belt on my waist

I waited, I was patient
As I took stock
Of power lines
Skittered across an empty landscape

I listened to crumbled words
In the dawn in coffee shops
The stories of tradesmen
Who hesitated in my presence

I painted my nails in desperation
I gazed at the orange, the white
At the dazzle and the glitter
And I let it all seep in

Until the spirit of Essex
Was embedded in my soul
Not to replace my home
But to let me be here

And still be whole

Divide and multiply

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I want to know why
When I undivide
Pay my full attention
I don’t multiply

I am simply whole

I unseat myself
I stand up
And shout out loud
No one hears me

I don’t under-stand

I stand up really straight
I don’t slouch
I make noise
I yelp, I scream, I call

No one responds

I unkind them all
Repaying all the kindness
I take it back
And pay it over

It does not work

I unhinge
And take the door with me
When all I had to do was
Was turn the knob

I want to fly

I need to resole
To find my spirit again
Not a simple make over
I don’t need to resurface

I dig deep

I decry
Let the pain slip away
I unwind
Closing the door to the breeze

Yet still I am ajar

A bottle
On a window sill
Liable to fall
To break

An infinitely impossible number of glass pieces

I recede
Plant myself firmly
in the ground
Hold back, then go forth

Redouble my efforts

I redouble
I multiply
And there is the answer
I spread out across the universe

I come apart

And I spread out across the universe
And it is joyous
To see the world again
To re-view

I give it my undivided attention.