It Passed Midnight A Couple Of Hours Ago

Writings from the middle of the night. I don't know how to sleep.

[passedmidnight]

02/01/2025 - 00:44

~

G is in the centre of the keyboard and I've been staring at it for two minutes trying to figure out how to tell myself - constructively - that I should have learned by now that I won't ever beat this.

It's been my best run yet I guess. My personal best. I want to grab my face like a bowling ball, sink my fingers through my eyes and curl my thumb into my soft palette and pull my head open like a drawer. Tiny metal wheels squeaking as my brain trundles out on fleshy casters.

Yep, you see here? That's the problem with these models. They get the rot and theres not a darn thing we can do to stop it. Take it out to the forest for a bit, let the air get to it, that should slow it down but sooner or later it's all just gonna rust through.

~

Passed Midnight

[passedmidnight]

Holy (04/08/23 - 21:58)

-

Issac looked up at his father from where he lay, bare

oil rubbed into his olive skin.

They had walked the path at sunrise, together. Abraham wore each step with pain as he climbed, hands folded about the white linen parcel that he bore and the dawn chorus seemed to him a lament

The boy had not understood

but followed all the same, his footsteps falling in unison.

Now filled with joy tears blessed Abraham's cheeks in rivers that would never cleanse him as he cried his thanks to the heavens above

Issac rose from that stone slab and ran retracing his steps past

the goats and the olive trees and the scree and scrub and passed his home and past everything he knew and into the lands beyond

He ran until his feet bled and lights danced before his eyes

stumbled

fell

and as he lay in the heathen dust he thanked only himself for the distance laid between his bones and our father

and he wondered if the knifes command had been for Abraham, would they still have made that dawn ascent?

-

Passed Midnight

[passedmidnight]

[passedmidnight]

I can't tell you how much better I've got since this point 3 years ago, 2 days after my 30th birthday. I'm not on fire like I used to be.

I never thought I'd see the day.

[passedmidnight]

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[passedmidnight]

I think I'm ready to leave.

It's been a long time building to this point. Years.

Someone I knew killed themselves last month and whilst I was sad, I was jealous too.

I stood in the shower, my tears mixing with the water and the same thought churning over and over in my head -

Holy shit. He actually did it. He left. He did it. The thing I've been dreaming about since I was a teenager. He did it. He did it. He fucking did it.

It was like he was a hero to me, someone I knew who'd achieved the highest accolade.

And that's fucked. Isn't it?

But that's how much I don't want to be here.

- Passed Midnight

[passedmidnight]

Overstay (03:55 - 25/04/2020)

-

Everyone else is sleeping or left hours ago,

Home to better lives, to fulfilled sleeps and fingertips that graze skin in the night.

Tomorrow holds day-jobs and family plans,

We had fun, thanks for having us, but we have to be up tomorrow. We have things to do.

Beer bottles fill every surface of this place. But I'll stay up 'cos there's still some in the fridge. Maybe I should have left too - when the world started to slow.

But I always overstay. To the last drop.

This party wound down years ago

-

Passed Midnight

-

I never learnt when to leave a party, if I didn't completely incapacitate myself I would always be the last one up, way passed when things were enjoyable, way passed their peak. Not wanting to miss a single second, but inevitably suffering for it.

Lately I feel like my whole life is that sense of having overstayed, like I should have left by now, and I'm just sat alone in the aftermath, surrounded by the detritus of my youth, clinging to every last drop, knowing that it's over but not wanting to move on, because I don't want what's next.

[passedmidnight]

Haiku On Buried Love (06:54 - 17.04.20)

-

Beneath all this numb

It's still you my heart burns for

Encased in concrete

-

Passed Midnight

[passedmidnight]

01:07 am - 12/02/2020

-

I think some part of me died with Sam.

I don't know whether I left it in that toilet cubicle where I first hid,

or on the floor of the hallway when I got home, where my legs gave out beneath me,

or even if it ebbed away from me slowly in the hours that I've cried since, washed into pillows and the sleeves of jumpers -

but some beautiful and intangible thing left with him.

Some hope,

some fantastic dream that life could be what we made it,

that youth was forever and a bright enough smile could glue us all back together in a shape that looked something like fixed.

-

Passed Midnight

[passedmidnight]

Still. Stagnant. (21/11/2019 - 23:40)

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I am standing in the window watching the world go by. A cup of coffee, warm socks. Legs move people up the street. Trainers. Boots. Dress shoes and high heels. Move along move along. Tattered laces. Slip on. Highly polished. Slightly scuffed. Black. White. Nike tick. Triple stripe. Waterproof. Toeless. Down. Look down.

I am too tired to raise my head any higher than the feet that carry them along. Away to better world's. A cup of coffee, warm socks.

-

Passed Midnight

[passedmidnight]

Cadence (01/11/19 - 01:29)

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I wish I could hear crickets at night.

Real ones, not the tinny, rehearsed ones on my white noise app.

I wish I could hear the ocean waves, breaking on shingle shores

The fall of rain on the conservatory roof of my parents old house where I grew up, wind, a creak of timber and then of bed springs as you turn next to me.

Crickets caption a silence, don't they?

They proclaim it, somehow,

by interrupting it they make it final. Asserted.

It is quiet now.

We have said so.

-

Passed Midnight

[passedmidnight]

Haiku on being lost (31/10/19 - 00:46)

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We sway in the breeze,

Our arms hang loose at our sides,

We are all adrift.

-

Passed Midnight

[passedmidnight]

Grey (07/10/19 - 22:03)

-

I still love you. You've probably stopped reading this blog by now. You told me that you still did but I don't know why you'd carry on. But if you are, you know that I mean you.

It's been 47 weeks and 2 days since I left and I'm starting to think that the memory of those lift doors closing between us at Heathrow will haunt me for the rest of my life. Your tears still pouring down your face as I stood and watched you disappear.

I think of you constantly. And I don't mean just every day. I mean every second that I'm not hammered drunk, and even then, when the music stops and it's time to go home, the bed that was always too small to share with you seems empty.

I went to Brighton last weekend. My favourite place. Through some cruel twist of fate I ended up staying in a hotel directly behind the one that we stayed in together. The same place, just worse. One road back from the sea. One year back from us.

It was right by that bandstand, do you remember? I still have the photo of you stood under it on my phone, in the jumpsuit that I chose for you in that vintage shop, your big sunglasses, shaved head. The most beautiful girl, in the most beautiful memory. Smiling.

Without you it's just a bandstand, but it still cast a shadow on my heart to see it look so grey. And that's life since you moved on - the scenery stayed the same, but it's grey now. It's all grey.

About a month ago I searched my room for the amythyst necklace that you lost here. The one that I bought you in that little curio shop in Pokesdown. I moved everything. My bed and all the things under it. Everything. It took me hours and I still couldn't find the stone. I felt hollow for it.

At the time, it meant something to you and, in my head, if I could find it then in some strange way I would have found a piece of that. A piece of a moment when I still meant something to you. When you still loved me.

The lift doors close.

I honestly thought we would be okay. I thought that the distance couldn't touch us. I wanted to take you to Paris, this Christmas, to propose. To give you everything you ever wanted. But I waited too long. I took you for granted. And I lost everything. And it's grey.

It's all grey.

-

Passed Midnight

I made the worst decision of my life when I left, I broke my own heart and it won't mend.