Notes App Secrets

[cruisingforamusing]

FOMO

I used to think I wanted to die.

But I’ve come to realise all I wanted

was to escape disappointment.

See, I’ve alway been nosey, and had many hobbies.

As a kid I wanted to be a gymnast and a flautist and a dancer and an equestrian all at once.

The flight of the ever curious.

Terminal FOMO.

If I could live every life I’d come back again and again.

To descend every canyon

see every sunset,

travel every coast

kiss every kiss.

I’d discover music and dance all over again

And maybe this time philosophy

And next time geology

Or work a trade while I fall in love

Or rescue kittens in Tokyo

Raise children in the outback-The great Australian dream

And in every life I’d be begging for more time, always for more time

[cruisingforamusing]

Christmas list on the back of an M4 toll bill

Mum- tea cats health sewing retirement

Sister- minimalism slow life rainforest treats

Dad - garden coffee adventure learning

Brother - hope safety loneliness

[cruisingforamusing]

A poem for a sunny Wednesday

I am happy.

[cruisingforamusing]

Garnishes and Black Holes

“These things can exist simultaneously”, she says, “you can be angry and sympathetic at the same time. But that doesn’t change the impact it’s had on you.”

It reminds me of that night we had in the city last month. All dark coats and warm lights trying to ward off the winter. We discussed the universe over cocktails, as one does, and laughed about it on our drive back home, “Black holes are the absence of matter and garnishes help you enjoy the drink”.

Big and small and meaningless and mean all at once. Life is garnishes and black holes and impact that we can’t quantify. Infinitely expanding and therefore shapeless.

[cruisingforamusing]

I love you like a hot Summer’s night in Greece. Sweaty and breathy and salty.

[cruisingforamusing]

March 2020, a news story knocks me to my knees

I watch the world fall apart from the floor

Trucks full of bodies and the empty streets of New York

We close the windows and all but board up the doors

And sit eye to eye on the living room floor

As our rent money trickles down the wall,

I realise you’re not who I want

While you realise you’re not you at all.

My knees are scratched, bruised and bleeding

From their second slam into the floor

[cruisingforamusing]

London caffeinated

Coffees brewed with confidence

Hot sun with a side of sweaty upper lip

[cruisingforamusing]

The early ones

We are the holders of the day light

The bearers of bleary eyed news

The dawn still clinging to the heels of our shoes. We let it, understanding that feeling of denial. Let it have its five minute sleep in.

The morning quiet cloaks our shoulders as we sit huddled. Equally grateful and resentful that others have encroached on the morning quiet to share the grey dawn light together. We are the pause between sleep and wakefulness, between night and day. Before the chorus breaks and the school kids rampage on the station and briefcases awkwardly bump knees in a crowded train. We are the stillness before all of that. And no one speaks. We understand that. The quiet pause is too sacred to break. It’s ours to hold and protect, while the rest of you sleep

[cruisingforamusing]

Blundstones stand tall in linen pants in a jazz bar on Illawarra road. Right hand on a drink, left hand encased in the wispy fingers of a gypsy with unshaven legs.

We share war stories over whisky and vodka and the best bowl of chips we declare we’ve ever had.

The red hued walls numb time and blur my vision,

Until suddenly you’re 40, 55, and 64, cheekbones still doused in glitter and that grin like anime.

[cruisingforamusing]

Sometimes on a Night Shift i sleep in the end room. Bed 4. It’s an isolation room with an ante chamber and closeable doors. I’m usually comforted by the sound of the air con and the air mattress inflating and deflating around me. Separated briefly from the stomach of the hospital by glass doors and a thin orange curtain.

But last night as I got ready things felt eerier than usual. The aircon sounded less like machine and more like breathing. The room had dark corners and hidden nooks where memories could hide. As I lay there under the scratchy too thin hospital blanket I thought about what these walls had seen. What events had happened in this room? The hospital at its current site is only 10 years old, but in that time countless patients had rolled in, most lucky enough to roll back out. I wondered how many last breaths the walls held. How much grief and sickness pulsed through the veins and wires of the room. We are soaked with it, in this job. The pain of sickness. The grief of loss or new disablement. The walls seemed to swell with it last night, soaked in like it’s soaked into the bones of the nurses who care here. We wash your back and braid your hair and our fingers entwine themselves into your experience, however temporary that is. But each witnessed last breath lingers with us. Each held hand. Each tear of relief of disappointment. And when we can’t hold it anymore and the night shifts round our shoulders and send us home to our beds, the building stays awake, breathing quietly, holding space for countless memories of witnessed and unwitnessed grief.