A moment

I walk walls. Dark walls. He sits in the same spot and stares at the road. Grey hair in black night. I watch as he sits. He doesn't move. I pass by. Minutes. Then return. Still he sits.

I leave. Walk my walls. Walk home. He sits.

Shells

And here we are again in the turning, ticking, moving, roving, itching, scratching, licking, biting, beating, thumping turning of the world. And it turns, yes. In a full circle before falling off the pin it is sat on, sharp and shiny and malevolent to the core. It takes you by the hand and it leads you to that little rose garden, closer to the bay and that white cottage than you would have at first thought. When the door opens you must be careful not to scream and scare the inhabitants who are always sitting there in the front room whispering and talking and cawing and nattering and screeching into the glass of the windows. They are easily frightened.

So are you, I remember from the days we would run barefoot in the fields and not care about the worms between our toes. You found a dead bird one day, half eaten and rotten but you still called it beautiful or I thought you called it beautiful. What I imagine seems so real that it might be true if I tell you enough so I tell you every day, I make sure I repeat it word for word and talk as fast as possible so you can't miss anything. Like now I'm talking and talking and talking and you're there listening, you're always there listening, listening at the door, at the wall, at the floor, at the cupboard and at that sick little hole at the sink. You put it there to remind me not to get ill or I'll be like the plug-hole all silver and filled with such small rips that a mouse might have made them but they are perfect, perfectly round. It's almost like an art.

You liked art, you always liked art, you were always arting around in the garden beneath the ferns. It's not the same as the rose garden and it's not at all near the sea. You liked it by the sea, didn't you? I always liked it by the sea and the sand and the smell of the salt in your hair and on your fingers after you picked up all of the shells you could see and put them in the bucket.

Then you stood on them. You crushed the shells and the bucket and it makes me feel like you're glaring at me. You were always glaring at me, you're still glaring at me even though I am in this bed feeling oh so sickly, you still glare. You look at me with those eyes and they tell me it is my fault. Mine. That you glare at me so when I have done nothing but count the tiles on the ceiling and pretended that those shells weren't in splinters. But you're always here, aren't you? Always glaring and looking a gaping at me. Gawping at me.

Why are you always looking at me?

Shoes

There they are
in the middle of the floor
conspicuously empty.

But neat.

They weren't there
before when I glanced
to the right. They moved.

I watch and they're still,
the transparent feet
leave them be

until I look away.

Smoke

Each voice is loud and each conversation drifts in and out of not-so attentive ears - it is the eyes that are captivated, roaming the fence-bound land in front, picking up specks of a forbidden language. A hand brushes, eyes sweep and linger, backs turn and shoulders hunch. Their voices are piercing but their actions deafen. Each one of them a world of reaction and a husky whisper in a foreign tongue. In their pairs, they make a universe, full of words unsaid through tongue and lips. For hours, they could be watched and catalogued, each movement, each subtle wave of feeling placed in the pages of an empty book - though it would be full within minutes.

They stop. Heads turn in one direction and there is unity for a moment -

It's bright, so bright that their faces glow and their eyes reflect an off colour, an inhuman colour. It starts small, then grows with the breaking of wood and the ripping of unread newspapers. Language is lost and all falls silent as eyes focus and stare, nothing moves but the curling of the flames.

But with each stare, a different whisper comes, growing louder as the smoke makes circles in the air and the floating black of burnt paper spirals upwards with the wind. The bodies shift away from the light as it licks towards them, begging and pleading for them to come closer. But they know to step back, every movement mutters a tense curse - some so loud they're shouting.

But they do not hear it with their ears, they just stand and watch the smoke as it mates with the air. Unaware of their screaming, their yelling in the language only the eyes can decipher.

Their eyes stare at the light, reflecting an inhuman colour and the smoke drifts.

Frequency

It does weird things to my head, this song. My ear seems to hone in to something that shouldn't be there. Perhaps, it is a message, a hidden frequency meant for only those who are in tune with it, with the sound.

Long shadows lure you in...

It is neither pleasant nor unpleasant but no instrument nor voice could make it. My ears strain each time they try to hear, as if it isn't there and it's only my imagination. And what if it is?

The more you look the less you see...

Pursed lips and a furrowed brow, face like a raisin lacking in colour - what a picture. But it's still there, that sound.

So close your eyes and start to breathe...

Ah! The song alters, slips into its ending with a change - the sound is gone. The hidden frequency. And I'm in tune.

RE: Going Without

But what if the sleep does not claim me and the nagging gets stronger? What then do I do with my time in the late hours? What then do I use to distract myself from its pull?

My mind tells me: use what you know, what you don't have, what you do. But it's hard to memorise when the words jumble in my head, tickled by the fingers of the nagging hand. My sheet is crumpled but I cling to it. It cannot uncurl my clasping fingers even though it tries. But what if the sleep never comes? My fingers loosen. It will. Tighten once more. It's just lack of sleep, the tiredness eating at my form - it's nothing. It just makes you weak, not having that bliss of rest and it likes it when you're weak, sleep tells me. I nod, agree. You're right.

It is in the late hours that I wonder about myself, about what drives me and what fails me, about the nagging in my mind and the sneaking at the corners of my eyes. And before I sleep I doubt myself and I wonder 'what are you doing here?'

Silence.

Going Without

I feel at a loss without it, without this thing that I do. This almost compulsive need when the twinge is there. Without it, I have so much time. So much flowing between my hands and through my toes that I don't know where to store it all. I don't know which box to keep it in, which shelf to reorganise so that it all fits neatly. I thought it would be easy, without it there to tempt me, without it open and wriggling across my palm until I finally give in. But it's not. I find myself wondering if it's worth going out and buying something, just to give me somewhere to put my time. Something to stop me wasting it. To stop me craving it.

It's going well. The hollow feeling can be dealt with until the late hours. Then it's hard - it wriggles into my mind, begging and pleading and wanting. Tasting me and my need. It nags at the corners, fraying my thin sheets as it picks away at the threads. The late hours are the worst. It has gone past a feeling of victory and on to a question: why? I wring my fingers as if they will give me answers. My head thumps, go to sleep, but the nagging continues, the begging grows more insistent. I close my eyes. Ignoring it gets easier as the sleep pulls at my arms and my legs. It's better this way, it whispers. And it is. It's the better way, the good way. The other way was dangerous, it tells me, this way is sensible. It works.

I feel at a loss without it, without this thing that I do. But when sleep pulls me in I don't notice, the begging fades and does not come back until the late hours return. It's a circle, a cycle of want and need and rejection. It's waiting for me, waiting for the snap in my resolve, the crack that breaks through, the rip that tears from the frays in my thin sheet.

It's waiting.