#sailingonaboat

[soncoeurdelion]

Then,

And now.

Choices, choices, do we give our dreams away?

All the angels in the sky come to us and tell us why

Why choices are so hard to make

This could be my big mistake

Oh choices, what am I to do?

[soncoeurdelion]

Daisy

hello mister, pleased to meet you

i just wanted to let you know that i’ve noticed you for quite some time. you sit on the same seat in the train every single morning, always in the same brown oxfords. you're always engrossed, so you probably don’t notice my system of wiping every seat in that carriage with my arse through the week - one for each working day and then musical chairs on weekends. most times you’ve got a book with you. that’s nice, i like books. last week it was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. i fancy myself a regular kunderian scholar - we should get coffee some time. this past week it was Midnight’s Children. A marvellous creation there, by all accounts, but i confess, the subtleties of indian politics and the plain facts of indian history escape me. i did not finish it, perhaps you could explain it to me over the coffee that we should get some time. sometimes its the window across that captures your attention. this is the part where i superimpose an image of Matilda onto your person, exuding a kind of innocent but intense concentration. i imagine you trying to lift the windows with your little mind-hands. once, when i was seated at the table across you i “accidentally” tipped my bottle over and carefully watched your face. i can’t say i was disappointed because i didn’t know what to expect. in any case, you did not react. when i’m on the same side of the carriage as you, i try to observe what it is you’re looking at. but the first half of the journey is a slow decay of vegetation and the second half the dizzying flashing of tunnel lights. perhaps the dirt on the glass forms strange patterns. i, too, enjoy variations of cloud-watching. then I try to be introspective but there’s too much life in the train for me to occupy my head with my own. i would ask you what’s on yours, but you might be a bit taken aback. 

coffee?

yours truly,

Daisy

[soncoeurdelion]

Lamotrigine

you were the perfect crutch, and when i slowed down from sprinting, one by one i felt my limbs slide off like the dead skin of a snake and i thought, did i dream up a race or am i creating the ghost of an old habit? you know that feeling when you’re about to abseil down the side of a tall structure and its face, though featureless, is glaring at you with a fierce hatred, and the ground far below mocking you with its arse in the air? and you can just about feel your centre of gravity shifting over the edge, supported by your toes and the balls of your feet, the sweaty grip of one hand on the railing and the other numb from preparing to let go and grasp the rope instead. at this point your stomach is doing cartwheels in a continuous, confused loop - bracing itself for the sharp drop and then recoiling instinctively when it realises it’s still where it was. and there are lots of people shouting at you, all these voices telling you what to do - but the instructor can’t lower you down until you’re ready to move correctly, and the fools at the bottom can’t see that the 50 yards are really 50 miles. and then time starts to play with itself so that 3 minutes feels like 3 seconds, or 3 hours, or in one millisecond feels like its travelling one way and then going backwards the next that’s me right now. obviously i’m being dramatic, but imagine all that squeezed into the time span between 2 heartbeats and you have a pretty good idea of the kind of paralysing fear or uncertainty, should i say, that i’m routinely subject to. hands are bleeding don’t let go, enemy’s sleeping don’t slit that throat hands are bleeding, i can’t let go - i don’t know how i’m afraid of what comes after. like when you choose to open the door to a stranger and you know there’s no chance of them whipping around and striding out the way they came. you’re looking through the keyhole now but her face is wrapped up in the night i just keep thinking about the feeling, focusing on all this fucking pretentious writing and staying where i am right now. i don’t dare to look elsewhere do you understand what i’m trying to say? is this just narcissism or a poor excuse for inaction?

[soncoeurdelion]

Lamia

somewhere along the way i cursed myself by accident. i think it may have been that time i crushed a ladybug, or perhaps the time i shattered my sister’s mirror, or maybe when i stole my father’s gold and blamed it on another, when i lied to my friends, when i cheated on my lovers-

i list out my sins in the hopes that one day i’ll pinpoint the exact moment it was i condemned myself to this downward spiral, as clichéd as the phrase may sound. but the element of circularity can’t be dispensed with, if this narrative is to be both true and accurate. because that’s all i ever seem to do - go round and round in circles, digging the same trench along the same perfectly curved lines, deeper and deeper into my most unconventional grave. i am driven on and on by a maddening glad-fly i can’t even see, except, in this story, i am all of Hera and Io and fly.

they say if you want to change your life you first have to change yourself. but somewhere between too little and too much there is a piece of the puzzle that is already missing, some bright yet invisible line that has been drawn without my knowing, maybe even a whole series of wrongs linked by some indestructible chain of causation. it is a splinter i would gladly extract, but i simply don’t know how.

so, on my list grows.

[soncoeurdelion]

4-word-story

"Death has changed you."

[soncoeurdelion]

“You used ‘darling’ often. Often as a pejorative, or perhaps as a concession to soften the condescension. My darling, then. My darling will you not let me go home? At this juncture I have no idea of where I refer to - where was home before I met you, where is home now that I’ve been thrust out into the great spotlight of independence. Fuck you and your desire for community service. I do not need your affection. I did not know I needed it and as with all things, I will forget I ever did.”

Writing rubbish to pass the time, i just don’t want to work.