In-between Everything

In-between everything we’re together.

The pages, the sheets, the eye of the lens. Together.

Against all the odds we’re the odd

Couple

In-between your vows

We are

Banging our heads together we might as well

Be apart from you

Is me.

In-between my ribcage is a space where my heart

Forgot to beat.

You keep the core

Mon coeur

Without a middle we couldn’t hold together

So all the pips got spat out

And they didn’t grow

Because they got ground up

In-between us;

When we were very close.

Bits and Bobs

I carry a notebook with me most-times, so I can write things down, should they come to me or should I overhear something good. I sometimes find things written in them that make me smile or that make me laugh at myself (such MELODRAMA!) or that I haven’t quite finished or that haven’t really been started. Here are a few bits and bobs...

Short short story:

This story is so aimless it can’t be bothered to be told; it’s too busy faffing about sharpening pencils.

Overheard on a bus:

Girl 1: “You got a boyfriend?”

Girl 2: “Nah.”

Girl 1: “Are ya a lesbian?”

Girl 2: “Nah.”

Girl 1: “My sister’s got two boyfriends. Do you want one of them?”

Girl 2: “Nah.”

Unwashed and full of love...

Your anger whipped your scarf around your neck and you out of the door. I couldn't bear it; for you to leave like that. “If you go now, I don’t want to see you ever again,” I called out after you, soap opera-like, as you started down the stairs. Only what I really wanted to say was, “Please don’t go. Please stay.” Your footsteps stopped abruptly on the wooden steps. I held my breath.  You came back. You simply said, “Well I want to see again.” You sat down next to me. We talked it all around in circles again and all I could think was that I should have said “yes,” back then in the spring, in the newly opened candlelit bar. I should have let you be with me then, unwashed and full of love.

All the postcards never sent

He wrote the postcard without thinking very much. It said, "Mary, Now I am away from you, I know I want to be with you when I am home. I am on one knee and I am asking you to be my wife. Tell me your answer when I come home. Love always, Derek.” He posted it into the yellow post box and went into the cafe. He had a stiff drink and it was then that he started to think about love.  Was his love good enough for her? Would he be the best husband? He was no good at catching spiders, he knew that. No...he was no good with spiders. It simply would not do.

He went back to the post box and waited. When the postman came, he gesticulated wildly until the postcard was safely back in his pocket and he went back to the cheap hotel alone.  He kept the card in his bag and carried it across France, Italy, Greece and all the way home, where he watched Mary marry Bernard. He helped Bernard choose the ring. He was the best man, but Bernard was better; he was good with spiders. Mary had four children. Derek framed the postcard and kept it on his mantelpiece; his trophy of loss, of all the letters never sent. When Mary died she smiled and thought only of Derek. When Mary died he posted the postcard.

Where did you get that coat?

“My mum gave me this coat. She saw it on a scarecrow and thought it was too good for a scarecrow. Italian wool, see? So she took it and had it cleaned and gave it to me.”

“So your Mum stole that coat from a scarecrow?”

“Yes.”

I can hear the sky moving above me. Roads drifting under cars. Land falling down through the rain. The page is moving, not the pen. Earth rotates under motionless train tracks.

Overheard on a bus:

Boy: “Do you know how thunder is made?”

Mum: Silence.

Boy: “I do! I’ll tell you. We got told it in school today. It’s when the clouds get so high up that they crash into space: BANG!!”

Mum: Silence.

First Warmth

Sitting side by side on the bench

By the sea.

Not speaking, only pressed their faces together, cheek to cheek, eyes closed

Moving now and again, just to be closer.

And it was the first warmth of the summer,

But they were migrating to colder climes,

Into a forced winter

Without love.

They were so warm.

Why didn't they stay?

In plastic garden chairs

Yesterday we were so close; in the garden fixing the tyre, in the kitchen making tea, in the afternoon, against the wall, pressed against each other, and under the covers you took me in your arms until I took the lord’s name in vain (amen). We pulled ourselves apart, sitting half-dressed on the bed, a state of dishevelled shock, we pulled ourselves together, our socks up, smoothed down our hair, left the house, one through the back gate, one through the front door, we stood in the road, staring at each other, a safe distance in-between, separate ways, I got the photos, you bought the beer and stole the lime. Reunited in the garden, slices of forbidden stolen fruit, bottle necks, sitting too close, staring, unflinching, intensity unmatched, in lust, in love, in plastic garden chairs.

But when you left, the sun disappeared behind the clouds and the light faded. I think that perhaps we blew all the fuses, up in the sky. And today it stayed gloomy and rained almost all the day long.

Yesterday we were so close, yet today, today you felt so very far away. Everything has come between us again. It’s all stacking up against us, and no matter how hard we try, we cannot get close enough. Insatiable, impossible; a love affair about to hit the wall at pace.

Little Whirlwinds

Little whirlwinds

And autumn leaves,

Caught up in a chance meeting along the road.

We spin each other about;

A sweet dizzying dance,

Locked into each another's movement and colour and

Taken along

For the wonderful ride.

And all else spinning outside becomes a blur.

Until we tire one another.

And all spun-about and lost,

We have to let each other go.

And so the little whirlwind, grown weary, turns away,  

And the little autumn leaf drops, scuttling along the pavement

Faded and curling at the edges.

But slowly, while the seasons turn, 

The leaves grow again

And in our stillness,

We might find another who catches us unawares;

Another little whirlwind who plucks us from the tree, 

Lifting us up, higher still,

Dancing us through the brilliant sky.

And our colours begin to show again;

Bright and clear and beautiful.

If only for a little while.

My little whirlwind,

We are turning again.

Forever turning.

Bread Bin

I remember being small and looking up to my Mum with her wisdom and all,

And yet I could not fathom just why, O why she needed to stand in the street and talk to her friends about such boring things as work and sofas and crockery. I knew not the things of which they spoke, only I knew that they were the most boring things that they could have ever chosen to speak of; no robots or aliens or talking mice.

But I was a polite child, so I would stand blinking loudly or hopping thunderously from toe to toe, perhaps a daring tug on the sleeve (and that was only in desperate times). I promised myself that I would never talk of such dull things.

On New Year’s day, aged 32 years and 3 months,

I found myself in my kitchen with my friend of 17 years,

So charmed, so amazed and pleased

By my new addition; the Bread Bin.

I caught myself, and admitting my adult sin,

Wondered when such things became so exciting?

If I was 6 years old, the bread bin would be interesting too

But in a different way;

There would be a little dragon living therein,

Or an army of tiny aliens,

Dancing giraffes

Or is it a wayward space ship, made of shiny tin?

Only I’m not 6, I’m 32.

And it is a lovely bread bin.

When all the fuses blew

There is a man wearing shorts, holding a large multi-coloured golf umbrella.

I watch him out the window of the cafe, the cafe that plays the terrible music, terrible loud.

The man behind the counter sings along to the adverts, not the songs in-between

And outside the rain pours and pours in incredible streams,

As the sailing boat, all sails tucked away,

Rolls incredulously under the rain and the thunder

Claps cut through the air

Whilst you smile, leaning back in your plastic chair

And we drink chipped mugs full of tea,

You admit to infidelities, one two and three

(The numbers rise as the rain adds to the sea).

The man alone at a table behind sits huddled over his tea,

Hi-vis jacket gleaming under its own coat of work-hard dirt.

The little boy behind you clutches his spoon mid-way down the handle, as if it belongs to a giant, and gobbles his pudding as if it belongs to another who might come to reclaim it at any moment.

His mum peers intently out of the window, as if she is willing the rain to wash something unwanted away outside.

But perhaps I paint her a colour to match my own, so I am woven into a patchwork pattern, threadbare but not solitary.

Earlier, in the sunshine, we told each other stories about the sea and the seashells.

We played on the sand until the sea moved in and the sky drew down curtains of hot heavy darkness

And the final act was all melodrama and thunder and rain that seemed to spell the end of the world;

At least the end of our world.

And as all the fuses blow, up in the sky,

I feel the sorrow in my stomach up and twist and lock me into a place I don’t want to be.

I know that you don’t believe that this is “goodbye” (the same as we've said so many times);

You don’t believe me, but I'm saying it;

Please let’s turn in. Fold. Let’s fall in with the broken sky.

And the words fell away from me.

And the words fell away from me

Because they always do.

Always inadequate, stumbling, sentences taken away from me before they should end. That’s how it was, talking to you.

“Beautifully inarticulate, falling,” he said to me once, describing the words of the album he held in his hands, my favourite album, my favourite hands. He asked for a cigarette, noting the tobacco stain on the index finger of my left hand, and he said, “I see you haven’t given up. I've tried, but it’s missing from me at this moment.”

And he rolled a cigarette and we sat and talked about little things, the little things I still remember. Different to the time I met him in the street, unwell and distraught and he listened and comforted and drove me round the corner, just round the corner, so I wouldn't be alone. He had a tape player in his car and music that sounded exotic to me then.

He said, “‘What doesn't kill you makes you stronger,’ apparently,” and he smiled. I wish it had been true.

When I was tired and drunk one night I sent a note to him, scrawled on paper, covered in dew. Intoxicated, inarticulate speech of the heart, falling down the page. Scrawled on paper, sent by messenger, covered in dew; oh he knew, yes he knew.

We stood outside and smoked and chatted and he spoke of plans and where to go, so animated, so full of ideas and hope and knowledge. Ready to leave for more, something more, calling him on.

And we hugged, said fare thee well and he kissed me goodbye on the neck, stumbling, awkward, kisses misplaced, off the cheek, off the cuff, near the collar bone. Them bones, them bones, them bastards who dried out your bones. I wish I had known more, known how to help you, what to do. Try as I might, I can’t help but think about how you must have felt at the end of it all, on that night.

There were messages and those messages meant so much to me. I still have them. Not ready to give them up; not quite yet.

One day the call came, and I heard that you had decided to go and would not be back. I was with my dear friends, and they asked me what I wanted to do, and I wanted to go away too, and so we three went away together. And I think of you often. And I still think of you often.

But again, the words fall away from me

Because they always do.

Because I haven’t the words to do justice to you.

Days away

Liz was reading the book that I had dropped in the sea earlier today, Britte was cleaning the bedroom, Patrick was tying the yellow down with cable-ties and Louie Louie was licking his balls whist the sea kept gently moving in and the sun hid up behind the clouds. I hid nothing but carbon copies of your fingers, which I kept in the pockets of my shorts for rainy days.

The sun tucked all of winter’s cruels away and to bed and I forgot how cold I had been in that old dark house. At 6 o’clock, when I had lay down to rest off yesterday’s excess, I remembered the name of the man whose lips I had met last night. Two kisses and many words had passed between us and off into the night. Now I could not say exactly of what we had spoken so intently, but I know that we both had broken hearts and that we tried to kiss them away knowing that really, it was as futile as you and I. He had been in the army and now he was thinking of what to do next. He said he would stay here forever, on this island and be content, and I would go back to my island and continue our tug-of-war over my heart. The sun would not be so brilliant, but you would be, and the insects were smaller and you would be my fly net on the days that you were spare.

You could hear the goats in amongst the dry trees, their little bells clunking whilst they meandered along. When we had walked up into the hills into a little village, we had gone into the old man’s shop to buy water and small timid cats with patchy fur had played outside the door. Another old man sat in the shop drinking lemonade and watching the television. Everyone was friendly and most people smiled, but not as much as we did because we were lazy to the core and we were getting fat.

Lots of people rode mopeds and as they rode, they talked. They rode side by side so they could talk as they went, they said “hello” as they passed and some of the boys whistled you on the way by. I saw a young boy of twelve or thirteen riding, his dad on the back, a big proud grin, so big it covered both of their faces. No one wore helmets, not even the children. Billy rode drunk last night and I had told him off but Patrick said there were no rules, or not any that people took any notice of, anyway. Patrick had been out drinking until 1 o’clock this morning and when Liz had asked if he had driven-drunk he said “no,” but did a little smile and turned his face away towards the sea. A man at the bar in a crumpled cream linen suit had come up to me and said, “You are beautiful,” then stumbled his way diagonally out of the door and sped off into the night on his moped. A compliment is still a compliment, even from a drunk. “Is it?” said Elizabeth, laughing to her wine.

The bugs strolled along window, the cats strolled nonchalantly by our table and we strolled lazy through the days. The only thing that was busy was the wind, and even that was kind.

Britte was a good cleaner but a better talker. If she cleaned as much as she talked, we’d all slip off the floors and into the sea. I like Britte very much. She likes animals and people who have learning disabilities. She said the world would be a better place if everybody were dogs or learning disabled. That way, she said, there would be no more wars. She said the dog followed her all over the island and introduced Louie Louie to us as her boyfriend. She said he could run miles, no problem. I liked that they named him twice. If I get a dog I’ll name it twice or give it its own surname for grandeur.

We slept for four hours then we went to meet Georgos to get the boat. We could not believe that anyone would give us their boat to use by ourselves, especially as we were most likely still drunk from the night before. We found a little beach that you could not reach by land and tied the boat around a rock and went for a swim. It was noon and the hottest part of the day. Liz opened the bottle of wine and we drove back around the little bays, the clouds falling behind in our wake.

Up on the mountainside we saw stone steps that were worn smooth with four thousand years of footsteps. We took our footsteps carefully on flip-flopped feet with goosebumps on our shoulders. 

Patrick was just passing us, driving home from the shops but took us took Bruno’s house. Bruno was an Italian artist who had thick white hair and a white moustache which was stained yellow where the cigarettes hung. He spoke Italian and Patrick who was South African spoke in Italian, while Pierre, who was French but lived in Geneva as an English-French translator, tried Italian and the French doctor spoke English whilst one of the English girls understood Italian and the other understood a little French but we all got by apart from the dog who only barked at ankles.

Bruno had painted frescoes on the walls of the old church. It was a white-washed stone building with a little bell on the top. Bruno had painted a picture of the forty saints who had been put to death. He had painted one saint to look exactly like him. In his house was a painting of a nude with her tongue sticking out suggestively. I looked for her but the forty saints were all men. I suspected Bruno was no saint.

On the alter were many candles in elaborate golden holders and above them, right in the middle, hung a wire with an energy-saving light bulb dangling on the end. Perhaps God and the gold did not shine brightly enough.

Jerry was bad for our health. He fed us waffles with butter and honey and every type of alcohol he could find. I liked that when he made cocktails he dropped cherries on the floor and spilt orange juice down the bar. He was the most ramshackle cocktail waiter in the world and I liked this about him. Liz did not swear but she did after she had been to Jerry’s. “You never get a poodle fucking a Labrador,” she pondered. “How did it get up there?” Alas, I did not know the answer.

Sunday night last bus

Sunday night last bus

An empty drink can rolls about the floor

Signalling the end of a-not-quite-summer’s day

But the man who just got on is full of drunk

And the smell of beer rolls down the aisle along with the remnants of an energy drink

That has probably fuelled

The argument of the teenage couple in the seats at the back

Who miss their stop because they are too busy arguing

Yet they kiss ferociously in the street when the bus stutters away

Desiring the Hollywood effect on their small-town tongues

And in the car headlights, flashing past

They are happily captured in the spotlight

Forced upon a captive audience

On the Sunday night last bus, which soon empties

And we all roll away down our different little aisles

Wondering how many times we missed our stop too       .