#allwhy

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Words on a Screen

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Either my voice isn't loud enough or my words aren't good enough.

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I Can't Speak About It. (Spoken Word - Draft)

I can’t speak about it.

It’s as if I’ve forgotten, making false memories to my eyewitness testimony. I’m unsure of what exactly that Zoey Van Gooey album has done to me, but whenever Lee mentions his karate training I find myself laughing into regressive tears.

And maybe mentioning his name does the same to you. I’m sorry.

I swear, I’m trying to forget Gallifreyan for you. The same reason that I tried to learn it. I admit, I wish I could keep the more innocent memories like this, but I guess I get it. Lust is being tied to a rack and embracing the stretches, when friendship is only the questioning between the next crank.

But It wasn’t all quiet kisses and squeaky bed dry humping: it was frost underfoot at 3am by Markeaton River, confessing how pathetic all our false friends were. It was teaching you how to roll and lick a Rizla even if I hoped you’d fuck it up. It was your undeniable gasp at the season finale of Attack on Titan when I looked at you blankly, wishing I loved the twist. We were companions. The Sjin to my Sips.

One way £35 taxi cabs weren’t enough. My first cramped Ryanair flight towards my first breath of Dublin wasn’t enough. Polite chatter to your inquisitive Mam and Gran while my hands shook sweat into puddles behind my back wasn’t enough.

Letting you mount me in nothing but a dress as I desperately tried to relinquish your gender by fixing my eyes on the leg hairs escaping from beneath the lace hem, even that was not enough. Buying a multi pack of Gaviscon with my last few pounds for the next few weeks and lying beside you in my single bed, the soundtrack of hot heavy breathing upon my dimmed laptop screen until 6am, desperately wishing I cared more about my dissertation deadline than I did you was not enough.

Perhaps you, too, are an eyewitness to this incredible wreckage.

For you, the love we had harboured and sailed away like your favourite David Grey song. For me, it was nourished as a growth.

My inoperable baggage, lodged within a body I wish could bleed free of it.

The last thing you wanted was my pain, you said, as you tore yourself from the concave car that was our supposed future and left me beneath the totality with nothing to pry myself out, and I can’t help but think about my bridge, MY bridge that you forced me to kiss you on, as if you could ever cover up my love for it with a memory of you, no, I keep worshiping my concrete graveyard with only echos of your pleads from the other side of the phone. drivers look up to me, speeding by and already forgetting the possibility of me ruining their day, and the last thing you wanted was my pain? The very last thing I wanted was to be abandoned, helpless, once again, on my own, now actually staring down from my bridge with no one around, no one coaxing me from the edge, no one left to even call when that stage of realisation kicks in, that this could actually happen, I could do it, lift and push. Like my doctor said, messy, but where is he now? His Venlafaxine douses my veins but how can arteries be used as a harness? Where’s anybody? Gone. Finally. Nobody.

So I guess neither of us got what we wanted.

Perhaps I shouldn’t elaborate. Not on this, not on the spirits I drank to drown you, or the blood I spilled to drain you.

Or perhaps I say I can’t speak about it to protect both of us from knowing that I can.

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My Boy Banjo

I cradle my 9 month old Mini Lop, petting his lucky feet and tickling his whiskers as if I can hear my son’s laugher when he wriggles. My mother fixates on him. On me: as if flaunting pride in her smile. Little whispers remind me of the pregnancy tests she doesn’t know I took. Ben would be 7 years old in June. Laura had named him before she even read the ’negative.’ I emerged from my cubical in the Clock Towers. We sighed, but for separate reasons. I could see my future again. I could go home like a child. I often forget how much I valued life because it’s not a common feeling anymore. Sarah bought a cake into a lecture recently, and jokingly asked for a knife to share slices. I pulled a carving from my satchel and waved it. For a girl with white lines and cigarette burns painting her skin, she had never looked so hurt. The second was after Freshers. My boyfriend convinced me that I didn’t know my own body and I began browsing Mothercare as I passed and holding my stomach at night. You’re alright. It isn’t too late. I secretly snook a mug into the bathroom while my flatmates were out. Another negative. I took the Third just in case that time, blasé. At 50p each I had prepared for spares. I still felt the need to cut the stick in half and lay the results in my journal like a memorial. The Last time was in my new Man’s flat. I had a marathon of Simon Pegg films while he worked a Saturday shift. Once home, he pressed his cold nose to my neck and said he was treating me to dinner. Pascal at the Old Vicarage. I persuaded him to wear the grey suit he used for weddings with a bright red tie to match my new chiffon dress that I’d purchased second hand on Ebay. After a toast, he stomached my choice of Canti Vino Rosé: but my first sip left my stomach burning. I was back, laughing with my dad In that BMW, driving 15mph over on the A45, bumps in the road making my stomach drop like it did falling atop a high swing. Perhaps DNA shows with age. The next day, 10 minutes passed before remembering it was still sat naked in the sink. To this day, Banjo kicks when I rock him, scratching my arm to break himself free before I flip him onto his back again. But look at that button nose. But you are such a sweetie. But you are my boy.

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Let me know if I ever become the person you thought I was.

AllWhy

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King Boo-Hoo

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I don’t have anything to say But I keep talking in the hope that you’ll disagree.

AllWhy