Sunday 15 February 2015

Beginnings

This is the beginning of a story that will get longer...maybe a Chapter One...


Everything had stopped moving in the morning, she thought. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no paths to tread and there wasn't anyone to tell, no delivery to be made in thought or word, no one to give it all to.

She waited for him to leave. He slept loudly. She tried to wake him without it seeming deliberate - putting the radio on, fidgeting, sighing melodramatically, coughing, making tea loudly and then, when all else failed, jabbing him in the ribs and saying, "Sorry, but it's getting late and I need to get on."

He blinked at her, not knowing her face, where he was or what the correct etiquette might be at such times. Clothes on and out, he surmised. After all, she was not his wife.

He was not her husband but her husband would return soon, eyes filled with nothing and briefcase full of paper deals. He would be jet-lagged when he returned and she would make him his favourite drink with added sleeping tablets, listen to his edited summary of his trip and then take his daughter and pregnant maid and drive six-hundred miles away from him.

The new place was all rugged coast, tumble-down house, beautiful and wild; a place for her girl to grow and be free. A place where he would never come.

She watched him get in the taxi. "Sorry", he had said as he left; his parting gift an apology, an admittance of wrong-doing, of regret. Her one night of desire in six years, driven away sat beside an apology in a taxi, gone and gone and gone.  Change the sheets and get the sleeping tablets. Where is Leila?

Leila is praying, eyes tight shut, "Please God, make sure my child is healthy and happy and safe. I am not sure I believe in you any more, Lord, so please step up and do the right thing. Step up and be a father to my child."

Ten-fold

You told me that you’d called the wine shop down the road and said to the man,
“I’m in love with the woman who lives down the road from you, round the corner. Would you take a bottle of champagne to her for me?”
“How much do you love her?” asked the man.
“I love her ten-fold for each step you will walk down the road to her door.”
Pause. “Okay.”

So now it sits on the kitchen worktop because I don’t know who to share it with;
Because you are shared.

I daren’t open it because the pressure might just blow the roof off
And bring the walls tumbling down.
And then everyone would know that we love each other ten-fold.

Should I fold now? Or do we keep building this paper house?

How long until a whisper brings us tumbling down?

Fractions

My other half’s other half doesn't know that my other half has another other half. 
Which means he has a total of one and a half.
But I think I have maybe just a half of one of his halves, which makes him my other quarter, 
But mostly I am diminished myself, so I make up about a quarter too, 
Which leaves me with a half, whilst he’s got three halves. 
How much does my other quarter’s other half have then?

I'm fucked if I know.

But I do know something: these fractions aren't adding up.