Introduction
I avoid the truth because it does not contain as many layers as the lie. Words would be a form of art if only I could find a way to paint with what I say. 3 seconds, no comfort is a dream and a façade, made for myself and no one else.
Red-striped umbrella
#049 23rd of October, 2007
It happens on a spring afternoon while she is walking past the post office. There is a flicker - an impression of a
rounded nose and dry lips. It sits nestled between memory and realisation and she is beset with a sudden compulsion to
tilt her head towards the right to listen to a voice that is no longer there. Her hands almost dance upward in a flurry
of enthusiastic gestures, but she draws her muscles tight - rigid - and the action is stillborn.
And still I--
#048 22nd of October, 2007
The stranger says, "my dear, I was flying a kite, and the string snapped." He points to the sickening, brilliant
white expanse dissolving into a rustic blue above them and continues, "my dear, it has flown high and my eyes cannot
follow." He asks, "my dear, can you see where it has gone?"
Comes in gasps
#047 17th of October, 2007
They stop talking and cradled in silence he holds up his arms. The candlelight reflecting just so on the
waterstained ceiling is framed in the folds of his woollen jumper. The sight he thinks must surely perpetuate this
moment, and he is right, he will no longer see that ceiling again without remembering the steady weight of the warmth
sinking into oblivion beside him.
Walking downhill
#046 17th of October, 2007
Her heels had been so high, so high.
An even distribution
#045 5th of October, 2007
It has been three and two weeks since she began the habit of writing her memories on bits of paper and throwing them
into the garbage can alongside everything else she has no more use for (empty chip packets, the broken plates). It
becomes routine, and so every night after a late dinner she sits down at her desk, and writes the day away. In this
way she begins each day anew, unburdened by the day before. It is a salvation, she decides, it is a salvation and
not despair.
Beige
#044 25th of August, 2007
"I cannot remember a thing," he says, and reiterates the statement in fifteen different tones of voice to at least
fifteen different people. They are satisfied with the lie, just as he is satisfied, having told it.
It will do
#043 2nd of May, 2007
He repeated the words over and over and over and over. He repeated them until he forgot their meaning, and then he gave
himself up to the lure of sleep.
Under the flowerpot
#042 23rd of April, 2007
That one time he and she did something together, they left the house on a Saturday morning after a Friday night - which
doesn't sound so bad except they left the keys, too. He said to her, "So come live with me." The statement it flew out of
his mouth from so to me - shrugging off a jester's cloak - and before he knew it he actually meant it.
She, busy listening to the sound of her childhood (swings, children, dogs that can fetch and dogs that can not), did not
hear and so did not reply.
One, two, three
#041 19th of April, 2007
The bead sits on her fingertips; if she puts it to her left ear she fancies that she can hear a soft tune. Its essence
speaks of fluidity - a solid drop of water with the colour of foliage in the afternoon sun. And yet. And yet, when
her phone rings and she is forced to place the bead back into its proper position within the bowl, it is only one of
thousands.
Continuum
#040 12th of April, 2007
Seconds before it starts to rain he looks out of the window. Doesn't find what he's looking for and brings his head back,
licks his lips. This is the sort of weather we're having, comes the remark. The voice flows across his left
shoulder, it trembles across his collarbone. He counts the seconds until the rain stops. Looks out again but no, only a
rainbow. Yes, this is the sort of weather we're having, he replies.
Silver lining
#039 12th of April, 2007
Sometimes, he smokes. A flick, a hiss, a flare, and then the narrow-alleyway curl of the smoke, rising. He watches the
smoke, sometimes, trails it with his eyes and imagines the feel of it against his skin as it if were something tangible.
Past the smoke there is a sky, in the sky there are clouds. Clouds, he thinks. But doesn't remember.
Hard ground underfoot
#038 14th of March, 2007
The stairs spiral upwards, downwards, forwards. They allow him to flutter awake with vertigo, sweet silent
senseless vertigo by his side. He turns and sees the face, knows the face, loves the face, reaches out to touch the
face and then he wakes up for real.
Away, she takes herself away
#037 12th of March, 2007
The fifth stair from the bottom of the third staircase. The second window from the far corner of the living room. The
bedroom door. Everything, every second thing, certain things. Certain things in that house creaked. The morning he
wakes up on (it's a Saturday but he's not so sure anymore, looking back) the empty bed, he decides certain things in
that house were meant to creak, meaning some things were not, and he goes shopping for a new mattress.
Sweet, you're so sweet
#036 12th of March, 2007
Age 13. The feeling of impatience, the smell of burning plastic. One remembers watching the acrid smoke curl, skein upon
skein, vanishing, and one recalls the lingering feeling of being dirty, hanging in the air. The impatience took after the
smoke, and in all essence the two became blood relations. Age 16 and smoking (lung cancer? No ma'am, never heard of it).
One wakes up on a Tuesday morning to a grey autumn sky and the first breath is crisp, sharp, full of something wordless.
But there it is again. The impatience from one's youth (my youth which still continues, stretching out in a thin line
towards the horizon). There isn't any time to live, there isn't any time to live.
Rules; Breaking Them
#035 22nd of February, 2007
She is almost old; he is almost young. Yet we learn to make do with what we have, and if that isn't enough then we must
teach ourselves the art of moving on.
Hoarding secrets
#034 15th of February, 2007
With an umbrella she walks down the street, and the only rain is the rain in her head. The man beside her she treats
as one would treat a memory, and he is pointedly looking the other way.
Beautiful hands
#033 21st of January, 2007
I loved him. I love him now (so sweetly). And he loves me (back).
Held so dear
#032 13th of January, 2007
Two weeks from now he will have friends, and they will be different from the ones he has now. He changes friends like
other people change clothes (daily, obsessively, with gorgeous mahogany closets and matching shoes). In his mind the
world is made up of others like him - friends discarded and newly made, each going somewhere and never returning.