The Wooden Staircase

I am standing here, watching this moment from behind a willowly tree. You're climbing, high and higher, and tumbling down with an 'ooophf!' and rolling over to get back on again. High and higher. You want that last branch, you want to swing your leg over and keep a godly view over the park.

Godly, because, like God, you seem up there and we down here and not intervening. But you are intervening, you're 'ooophf-ing' down onto mounds of leaves and climbing back up. God doesn't shake the crunchy buildings below. He stays in his branch, making clouds from his cigarette smoke. Which is sort of like you, too. You're halfway up, you've fumbled with the lighter. It slips from tongue licked fingers - for grip, I think. You swear. Guess it's not going to be overcast today.

You look up. Fiddle with your cap, sunlight in your eyes. Swing, pull. So you're up one more. Your sneakers on the bark seems slippery. Slide, slide, slide, like your feet trying to go up the down escalator. Don't go very far, but your hands are strong. Heave. One more down, or is it up? You spit. Are the masses fleeing a tsunami, or just a freak downpour?

You look down. I'm fairly certain you didn't realise the miles and miles and miles between your throne and 'ooophf'. You seem unperturbed. How courageous. You pull your hand back. You don't really like spiders, all fangs and legs and it seems they got you with a pitchfork, didn't they? You're shaking your hand. What a nasty web of surprise! You're really looking down. A foot slides towards the lower branch, stretching you out wide. Reaching for the ground. So big and wide.

There's another branch, Atlas, above you. Don't drop the world!

But down you jump - I'm afraid for a moment you might break your kneecaps, but you know you won't - and you retreive your lighter, pocket it, run off covered in bits of crunched up leaves.

Once you're gone, I grin; my turn to be God.

Head Bone: connected to the Foot Bone

She says not to be ashamed of crying. It's not shame, it's that I've shed enough over the years, enough tears to fill cups and saucers and tea spoons and pots. I've sprinkled them from shakers onto meals. Dipped them into the flour of my cakes and let them dint the garden beds.

The sympathy has run cold. The ice river and the barren tongue. You want my mental diary and some post addressed to you from my heart. There are no post boxes at my hip or near my collar bone. You can't telephone through my belly button with your fingers and your nails, and you can't trek my secrets by clamouring over my hair.

Little light flairs in your eyes, from reignited fumes of smouldering corpses. The emotions you thought you buried with sweat and pacing. Tastebuds that fizzled away over dizzying pink drinks. The groove where you pressed your tongue when you tried to pull on my shoulderblades to keep me by your grazed elbows and your bruised knees. The shake, the grasp, the swallow to keep you down in the pit of my stomach to protect you from the hearth flames of hatred and blackmail.

Cracks in the floor tiles, scaling the rift that your emotions left in the carvern of my lungs. Those that fell got burnt in the acid of my stomach, eating up the minutes that stung and flocked into momentary bright action. Those that made it clung to my bones, in the tiny microscopic dints, to be my immunity and my disease. My fibre and my musical strings for every joint. The hollow centre of gravity that keeps regurgitating organic patterns and toppling over into your shins and your chin by the stairs to your door bell.

The chord that runs from spine to toes tugs away, in a morse code pattern, letting you know that under the sheets there's still hope that you can peel back the sunburn and the lipstick messages on my calf. The rapid screech of neurons in distress from the tiny sounds of your breath in my ear, and the marching of armies of tingles over my ribcage in time to your heart beat, swelling and fading with my own breathing.

You've travelled only as far with me as the creases in my hands.

Orange

I dreamt I was in handcuffs and orange underpants in an electronics store. He was no one, but he was you.

When I woke with the gut wrenching pull you handed me the teacup. 'Drink up.' Little sips, wondering why this bed is my bed. Black ribbon and cream lace on a cotten slip, the rain of a shower, washing off the night's work and will, and looking for a comb.

At work the telephone chirps like a badly trained parrot, but I answer it all the same. 'Brilliant idea,' was what I record on the notepad by the phone, as the colour orange pops into focus. Traces as replica's of your torture faces you in real life.

A lunchtime doctors visit. A child who wants to know what he's meant to be doing. A jab in the arm to make me lurch into a dream. I get handed a jelly bean for the faintness. Orange. You stumble back out into the sunshine, get in the car. The voices chatter at me from their tiny speaking crevices. Rain ahead.

Outside her house, orange flowers grow. I hold up the torn sheet, two words, 'Brilliant Idea.' Pavement, ripping off shoes. Passing through the door, her mail ripped open along the corridor. Sheets of paper, scattered numbers and symbols. She was writing neologies, while a joker of the deck watched her from the wall.

"Brilliant Idea. Read it to me."

She instead hands it to me, on orange paper and a little grin.

So it begins: I dreamt I was in handcuffs and orange underpants in an electronics store. He was no one, but he was you.

You look up, mouth distorted.

Boys don't cry

"It's like sending her off to Auschwitz! To be shaved and showered and gased," grinned her mother.
"You cannot compare having our dog groomed to a concentration camp, Mother!" she shrieked back. "Don't you dare laugh!"
There were squeals from outside where the dog was being washed.
"Sounds comparable," added her brother from the corner of the table.
When the dog came back in, sheered and shivering, friskily running over their tiles, it bounded into her arms.
"Look at the brave survivor!" grinned her brother, "Released and cheerful from her detention. Reunited with her true love!"

"Shut up."

'Let us be fireworks,' say You and I

You and I have planned so much together; the greenery to go in our gardens, the atlas surface for our travels, the names of the furry children, and the colour of the bathroom taps. You and I have written so many words to each other; sweet poems of sunshine days, letters of dedication, postcards of our seperation, short fridge notes for absence and favours. You and I have hidden so many things from the world; the laughter behind the stern looks, the sand in our shoes from late night walks, the cries of agony and joy, and the photos of the days we were elsewhere.

You and I have felt so many sensations; the chill of September winds on the ocean, the warmth of the sun, the dirt in our toes, the prickles of unshaved hair, and the feeling of our breath on each other's skin. You and I have dreamt of so many facets of life; bubble baths, travel, children, bright blue skies over the garden, dark storms, our hands intermingled again, fresh sheets and innocence. You and I have caught each other, our colds, our possessions, too much sun, and an infectious thing called love.

You and I sometimes becomes 'I' and sometimes 'You' is not enough.

Sometimes the flowers wilt, and letters burn and pages go missing. Sometimes the moon cuts in between. Sometimes You and I have eaten too much of our hearts to sustain us. Sometimes the storms blows the roof off, or we get locked up in skeleton filled closets. Sometimes the others come back, the books are empty, the cupboard's bare. Sometimes You and I forget the invitiation or that the future comes, and the past doesn't. Sometimes the door jams or the crockery drops. Sometimes the glue doesn't stick, the sun doesn't rise, the medicine doesn't cure.

You and I explode like fireworks. 'Oh what a tremendous burning longing end for the initial squeak in the corner,' You and I say.

Late night insomnia

She hid her tears in the cubes of toilet paper stripped from the holder. She hadn't expected to have been invited in the first place, and the crunch of glass had toppled like her emotions. It was enough.

It's funny how something dropping in slow motion could cripple her so. Everyone stared at the icy puddle on the tiles. An encompassing stiffling watchfulness. When will she move to scoop it up?

Skidding heels on the tiles, small patters of laughter, someone with a dust pan to remove the slaughter and the shards.

Someone was banging on the door. Her heart skipped, to check on her?

"Get out! I'm going to puke."

She howled into her toilet paper shroud as moans came from outside the door.

The broken dictionary and the lost orchestra

"She's writing songs again," she said, little creases appearing on her forehead. "Or at least poems she thinks music might go with someday."

Her tuneless words littered the floor, cracking and trying to thread out her emotions. Meaningless, without even so much as a whistle. Lost with the last line, her questions, observations, so off beat.

"I suppose they're directed at you, but it's hardly a dedication you want to hang onto."

Some words in rings from tea stains. Hours with her back to the door and swirling her pen like a broken wand. She paused only long enough to chew on her knuckles and stare out the window, like it made a difference to the stream of vocabulary that intermingled in her fractured mind.

"Is it meant to heal her? Is it an activity of preservation?"

It was more like revenge, for the broken dictionary and the lost orchestra.