H. F.

[hannahfellows-blog]

august

It is august. I am warm, melting, honey-dipped from 5am until the evening comes out to play. August is my birthday month, so I am usually all balloons and sing a longs, licking strawberry icing off of my top lip. I am also covered in hay-fever, and bumblebees, and all the things that make me itch until I shed my summer skin. Somewhere inside me I feel a lion buried and remember I am a summer baby, but I am pining for the cold to bite me, sink me, tie me to a tree. I do not want to get lost in the orchard. I so do not want to feel my throat swell with flowers. I do not want to become a petal mouth, soaked in pollen, a hive, a loud and unmistakable set of wings. I do not want to taste my sweat in the air. I am too translucent for summer. My eyes are too blue. My whole body blushes when the sun tries to tell me how beautiful I am, and I have to find the shade, a shadow, to wrap me up and put me to sleep. I want to hibernate. I want august to come back another day, another year, another lifetime where perhaps I am a tiny green caterpillar who will become the world’s most beautiful butterfly. I will be famous. I will feed of the light and I will become an exhibit. It is august. It is my birthday. Happy birthday, peach face, honey girl, bumblebee.

[hannahfellows-blog]

fruit salad

did you know that you are like the star shape in my banana slices in the morning. and that you are the feeling i get when i correctly spell banana. you are the constellation of all the traffic lights turning green. you are making my bones grow bigger every day. i become a bigger home. i am a bigger bed for you to sleep. did you know that you are like the moment of sickness i get when i am about to fall and my heart makes its home in my mouth for a while. i am never ready for when you deliver it to its proper place. my chest is so big now and you fill up so much space and your tongue takes up residence in between all my intercostal space. (i try to tell myself this is coastal space and really you are the sea and just trying to love me but it is so hard when you are the reason i can sometimes barely breathe.) i want you to be wander i feel when the paper aligns exactly, where no tiny spaces are left to rot. i want you to be the moment my kite takes off. i want you to be the apple seed that takes root inside me and turns me into a tree. you are the moment i find you in hide and seek.

[hannahfellows-blog]

the thief

Let me tell you the ways of the thief: they will tell you on new year’s eve, that they love you, they love you, they love you. they will come to your bed and they will say I can only embrace you as a friend. they will pour you coffee and they will drive you home. they will call you at 4 in the morning, in the winter, saying, 'my darling my darling why aren’t you with me? this rum is so sweet and this city is so beautiful.' you will laugh, and you will not put down the phone.

In the summer everything will change; sin will warm its way through their skin. you will be left, on your own because you’re no fun anymore. how can you be fun when you’re so fucking sad all the time? it is your birthday, and you will be alone with the balloons. you will want to crawl inside that balloon and you will want to die as that balloon goes down. it is the thief’s birthday. they will tell you about the rum. but the difference is you are not the only one.

[hannahfellows-blog]

slow dancing

the way the light fell in made me listen and in the first instance i heard that a tree was growing into my cradle. but the time after that all i heard was the blue in a jay's wing fighting free. and whilst you were busy being romantic, darling, my heart was getting frantic as you pulled off my sweater and your eyes settled at chest level. not much to see here. the way the light got up made me listen again and in the first instance i heard my funeral flowers growing. but the time after that there was no jay and there was no blue and there was only an empty skull with bones that could remember a brain and nothing else. you told me this is what it's like to be slow dancing with the moon but the colour of your shadow made me want to sleep. you clicked and whirred into place and called me moonbreath as if i was meant to take it as a compliment. your feathers blew backwards and i saw that you were actually made of light and not dark.

[hannahfellows-blog]

at the moment, most mornings it is a case of a simple need of wanting your arms next to mine. it is strange that even though i've seen your blood once it is like we are the same river. or maybe i'm just hunting for some intimacy.

you don't realise that every morning you have my heart first thing.

[hannahfellows-blog]

  your heart may still swing upwards but that's the only thing that remains here. all the noises in between have moved to a slower rate; more shallow, less love in them. maybe it's because my heart filled up with so much sadness all the chambers moved into one: one big room filled with all the loss in the world. but i still think that's no excuse to take a walk on the moon.   i am always being told that it is time to skim that stone, and that the waves that follow are all a part of the process. but that is hard when i see you wearing shoes you've never worn, and saying things you would never say, and painting your face in ways i have never seen before. my sad little heart tells me that this is what being part of a tribe is.   perhaps that is the case. with your hood up and my sleeves down it's a wonder there is anything left to burn. you wondered where my hands had gone but the truth is i never had any anyway. in your new rituals i see you are all gleaming teeth and smaller ribs, but i think that's the case when you can't fully let go.    l e t t i n g g o. people are not ropes and they are not hands. they are all the tiny movements like a sheet in the wind or the way a leaf trembles when it is raining and you wonder if you just missed a bird moving. they are what you always catch in your periphery and they are the way her hair moves when she breathes out in the morning. they are the chest moving up and down like a slow ocean tide, the pupils dilating when they accept the dark and the rate ice melts down to water.

[hannahfellows-blog]

tennis shoes

hobbies include: chasing bears with balloons. eating chocolate with a spoon. please leave your numbers at the door and i may get back to you. when i heard you say you had ten issues i heard tennis shoes, so i dressed up in white, made strawberries and cream; mistake number one. it's all down hill from here.

[hannahfellows-blog]

results

i don't need coaxing into the back of your car. but i would rather go to bed (with you). So you lock the door, lock the door, lock the door, and your lap wipes my memory clean. for a second i am all piano keys and bruised knees. i listen out for the telegram but all i hear instead are the symphonies of your diaphragm. so you unlock the door, unlock the door, unlock the door, whilst i drink up the daisies and the conversation is just the crackle of your cigarette.

[hannahfellows-blog]

first thoughts

often i am overwhelmed by how much i love breakfast. my first thought in the morning is not about the rain outside, or the bones that spill out of your back. rather, it is about how quickly i could devour a pancake, or, how deep i would drink my elixir (that's coffee to you). but all you want is to hold my hands and rub my thigh. but i am thinking about my would be last supper: scrambled eggs on toast.

[hannahfellows-blog]

sink.

did you know that the thunderstorm last night was all a loud lie? it was actually the sound of my lungs collapsing beneath the weight of all the things people drop in one day. girl drops a silver bracelet. man drops his keys. man drops his children off at the school. man drops his love down a well. woman drops her love down the same well, and so a fountain is born. boy's voice drops to the deepest note. cat drops its gaze to meet a young mouse. girl drops a grudge she held for 11 years, only to realise it was the only thing keeping her fire burning. boy's blood pressure drops as he stands, finally, to tell her that he wants to go for coffee with her (which, he drops, but that is much later). and so i could not breathe - that is the quiet after the storm.

[hannahfellows-blog]

getting your 5 a day

number one. breakfast this morning was solitude, but i ate pancakes instead. i felt your heartbeat in the spoon.

number two. your knees used to crack. in the language of your bones they would say 'good morning' to me. but now all i see is your elbow in the moon.

number three. the piano hasn't been touched for months. sometimes i wonder if that's where you are living now. i am praying in a minor all afternoon.

number four. sometimes i sit in the car and pretend you're there, singing lungs and neptune eyes. we're at the beach, but i've lost you somewhere in the dunes.

number five. ghosts aren't real, but sometimes i can feel you in the floor. i try to kiss your chalk outline, but i think i woke you up too soon.

[hannahfellows-blog]

moving house

i took all your photographs off of the wall, which is great because i hated your fucking teeth anyway. i heard you went to live inside her for a little while. maybe you brushed your teeth in the sink of her ribs, or curled up in the bow of her back (i used to see the crescent moon in yours). and maybe she rubbed your neck  with her heart, a soft beat.

i moved too. i went to live under a window mostly so i could see the sea. no boys here. i'd had enough of their waves. but now i have a hollow to call home. and the lamps give out just enough light here. i'm not worried about the dark, or the drip of the tap, or tripping over the coffee table, or banging my knee against the bed first thing in the morning. no, i am not worried.  now i can breathe on my own.